CASTON, V. N. D., 1972.Linear sand banks in the southern North Sea. Sedimentology, 18:63-78.

Six holes were drilled on or adjacent to the V^ring Plateau, Norwegian continental margin, during the course of DSDP Leg 38. Three were drilled within a sedimentary basin lying to landward of a prominent buried discontinuity, the V^ring Plateau Escarpment; the others bottomed in basaltic basement to the northwest of this feature.No sediments older than Tertiary were recovered. A virtually complete Tertiary succession through to the early Eocene was cored at Site 338 drilled on the outer plateau, but in the sedimentary basin the deepest hole penetrated only to the middle Miocene. However, within this basin, oozes of Eocene age were cored from the center of a diapir.The cores recovered indicated that terrigenous sediments, in part derived from erosion of basaltic highs, were dominant on the outer part of the plateau during the early Eocene. These were succeeded in the late Eocene by pelagic siliceous sediments, which continued through the Pliocene. An increase in terrigenous sedimentation at this time marked the onset of glacial conditions, which were responsible for the deposition of poorly sorted muds and pebbly muds throughout the Plio-Quaternary.Sediment deposition and facies variation indicate that basement highs to the northwest of the escarpment were being actively eroded until the end of the early Eocene and did not sink to a level at which sediment could accumulate until the early Miocene. Correlation of sedimentary data with seismic profiles in this area suggests that the escarpment is a major fault that has been active throughout the Tertiary and probably the Quaternary. Clay diapirism in the basin is a recent phenomenon related to the creation of a density imbalance by deposition of terrigenous sediments in the Plio-Pleistocene.

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Sills of olivine-microgabbro and olivine-dolerite 0.5–180 m thick intrude Lower Liassic (Hettangian–Sinemurian) sediments in the Fastnet Basin, a SW extension of the N Celtic Sea Basin, about Lat. 50°N, Long. 10°W. The evidence of 3 wells and 2300 km of seismic reflection profiles indicates 6 major sills and sill-complexes, and 3 possible igneous centres or plugs. A high-level sill may intrude Lower Cretaceous sediments, and one plug apparently deforms Cretaceous reflectors. K-Ar ages on separated biotites from a thick sill intruding Liassic sediments gave 170 ± 4 Ma (Bajocian). This sill contains 30% olivine (FO 70-73 ), 20% clinopyroxene (magnesian salite), 45% plagioclase (An 60-78 ), &, with accessory magnetite, ilmenite, edenitic hornblende, Ti-phlogopite, apatite, zircon, spinel (in olivine) and sulphides. Alteration to serpentine minerals, chlorite, sericitic mica and leucoxene is sporadic. The magmatism in the Fastnet province thus appears to have been active from the mid-Jurassic to the early Tertiary, related initially to the time of initial rifting between the European and American plates, and subsequently to their final separation between Greenland and Rockall and associated Thulean magmatism.