Abstract Continental margins and their fossilized analogues are important repositories of natural resources. With better processing techniques and increased availability of high-resolution seismic and potential field data, imaging of present-day continental margins and their embedded sedimentary basins, in which the majority of these resources are located, has reached unprecedented levels of refinement and definition, as illustrated by papers in this volume. This, in turn, has led to greatly improved geological, geodynamic and numerical models for the crustal and mantle processes involved in continental-margin formation from the initial stages of rifting through to continental rupture and break-up, to the eventual development of a new ocean basin. Further informing these models, and contributing to a better understanding of the features imaged in the seismic and potential field data, are observations made on fossilized fragments of exhumed subcontinental mantle lithosphere and ocean–continent transition zones preserved in ophiolites and orogenic belts of both Palaeozoic and Mesozoic age from several different continents, including Europe, South Asia and Australasia.