Abstract Recent work by a multi-disciplinary team has led to a significantly better understanding of the prospectivity of the North Red Sea. New regional biostratigraphic and environmental analysis from north to south through the Gulf of Suez and into the Red Sea have placed the Nubian sequences into a regional chronostratigraphic framework. The Nubian Upper Cretaceous pre-rift sandstones are observed in the field on both the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian side of the North Red Sea. This regionally extensive sequence was deposited in a continental to shallow marine setting fringing the Mesozoic Tethys Ocean, which lay further north. Extensive onshore fieldwork and mapping of sediment input points, fault orientations and fault linkages have helped to develop an understanding of the expected controls on syn-rift sandstone and carbonate deposition offshore. Thick halite with interbedded evaporite and clastics in the Late Miocene sequences of the Red Sea pose seismic imaging challenges. Recent reprocessing and newly acquired seismic data have produced a step change improvement in imaging of the prospective pre-rift section. Petroleum systems modelling incorporating new information on rift timing and crustal thinning as well as onshore core analysis for source rock properties and temperature variation through time indicates that oil expulsion occurs in the inboard section of North Red Sea – Block 1. This is supported by hydrocarbon shows in the drilled offshore wells which can be typed to pre-rift source rocks from stable isotope and biomarker data. All the key elements of the Gulf of Suez petroleum system exist in the North Red Sea. An integrated exploration approach has enabled prospective areas in the North Red Sea – Block 1 to be high-graded for drilling in early 2011.

A model is presented for the displacement history between western North America, eastern Eurasia, and adjacent oceanic plates (Pacific, Farallon, Izanagi, Kula, and Phoenix) for the past 180 million years. The model is based on the assumption that the hotspots in the Atlantic region have remained fixed relative to the hotspots in the Pacific basin (but not necessarily relative to the spin axis). The model uses a new determination for relative motion between the oceanic plates of the Pacific basin. The results show that in a broad sense the Kula and Izanagi plates moved in a general south to north direction through the Pacific basin, implying rapid subduction beneath Eurasia and right lateral oblique subduction with respect to North America. In contrast, the Farallon plate swept in a general west to east trajectory across the basin and was accompanied by rapid subduction beneath North America. The Kula and Izanagi plates were capable of transporting allochthonous terranes rapidly northward toward the paleopole. The Farallon plate was capable of transporting terranes bearing Tethyan fauna eastward across the Pacific basin and juxtaposing those terranes against the western edge of North America, with moderate displacements toward the paleopole. A set of maps showing reconstructed plate boundaries for the past 140 Ma provides the basis for interpreting terrane displacement histories. The reconstructions are also used to estimate the ages of the plates that were consumed at convergent plate boundaries throughout the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. The following events and relationships are noted: (1) fast (greater than 100 km/m.y.) convergence of the Farallon plate with respect to North America during Late Cretaceous and early Tertiary times (75 to 40 Ma); (2) rapid trenchward migration of western North America over the hotspots during this same time interval; (3) rapid decrease in age of the subducting Farallon plate within this interval of fast convergence; (4) synchroneity of these three processes with the Laramide deformation; (5) decrease in Farallon–North America and North America–hotspot velocities at about 40 Ma as the age of the subducting Farallon lithosphere decreased rapidly to less than 30 m.y. Our analysis shows that the age and bathymetry of the descending plates varied markedly along strike of the trenches. Fracture zones on the Farallon plate, across which large age offsets occur, were characterized by shallow (young) and deep (old) ocean floor on opposite sides of the fracture zones. As the fracture zones migrated north with the Farallon plate along the continental margin, buoyant young lithosphere capable of producing uplift and erosion existed immediately adjacent to dense old lithosphere capable of forming a bathymetric low. We speculate that some of the basins that formed along the continental margin during late Cretaceous and Tertiary times may have originated in these source-sink pairs. The relative velocities between continents and adjacent oceanic plates are shown on a series of maps as arrows representing velocity vectors at selected points of tectonic interest around the Pacific margin. Significant changes through time in these relative plate velocities offer insights into the mechanisms that control the diversity of tectonic styles found in the geologic record at the margins.

The Hudson-Champlain Valley is the only continuous lowland between the classic glacial areas of the Midwest and coastal New England, and presumably it contains the most complete Wisconsinan record east of the Erie-Ontario Lobe. A date of 26,800 yrs B.P. on intraglacial peat in New Jersey establishes a maximum age for the Woodfordian advance of the Hudson-Champlain Lobe. On western Long Island, deposition of the Ronkonkoma and Harbor Hill Moraines was followed by readvance and deposition of the Roslyn Till, and finally, by a stillstand on the north shore. Deglaciation from the Ronkonkoma Moraine began about 17,000 yrs B.P. In the Wallkill Valley, the southwestern physiographic continuation of the Hudson Valley, the terminal Woodfordian position is the Culvers Gap Moraine. Recessional positions are recorded at the Augusta, Sussex, Pellets Island, and Wallkill Moraines. The age of the Wallkill Moraine is established at 15,000 yrs B.P. The Woodfordian terminus of the Hudson-Champlain Lobe is traced northward from the Denville re-entrant in the Terminal Moraine in New Jersey, rather than westward, connecting the Ronkonko-ma and Culvers Gap Moraines.