Abstract The Late Jurassic–Cretaceous Parentis Basin (Eastern Bay of Biscay) illustrates a complex geological interplay between crustal tectonics and salt tectonics. Salt structures are mainly near the edges of the basin, where Jurassic–Lower Cretaceous overburden is thinner than in the basin centre and allowed salt anticlines and diapirs to form. Salt diapirs and walls began to rise reactively during the Late Jurassic as the North Atlantic Ocean and the Bay of Biscay opened. Some salt-cored drape folds formed above basement faults from the Upper Jurassic to Albian. During Albian–Late Cretaceous times, passive salt diapirs rose in chains of massive salt walls. Many salt diapirs stopped growing in the Mid-Cretaceous when their source layer depleted. During the Pyrenean orogeny (Late Cretaceous–Cenozoic), the basin was mildly shortened. Salt structures absorbed almost all the shortening and were rejuvenated to form squeezed diapirs, salt glaciers and probably subvertical welds, some of which were later reactivated as reverse faults. No new diapirs formed during the Pyrenean compression, and salt tectonics ended with the close of the Pyrenean orogeny in the Middle Miocene. Using reprocessed industrial seismic surveys, we document how salt tectonics affected the structural evolution of this offshore basin largely unknown to the international audience.

Abstract We summarize four emerging concepts in salt tectonics in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, selected from a longer list of concepts that have advanced significantly in the last decade. Squeezed salt stocks are common in orogenic forelands, in inverted basins and at the toe of salt-bearing passive margins. Modelling suggests that during early shortening, an inward salt plume from the source layer inflates the diapir and arches its roof. After further shortening, diapiric salt is expelled as an outward plume back into the source layer. Salt canopies are conventionally thought to advance by glacial extrusion. However, almost all modern salt canopies are now buried and can only advance by frontal thrusting. Thrusting allows the salt canopy and its protective roof to advance together, minimizing salt dissolution. Advance is by a roof-edge thrust rooted in the leading tip of salt or by thrust imbricates forming accretionary wedges. Minibasins can sink into salt if the average density of the overburden exceeds that of salt. This requires 2–3 km of burial of siliciclastic fill, yet most minibasins first sink when much thinner. Three alternative mechanisms to negative buoyancy in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico address this paradox of initiation. First, squeezed diapirs inflate, leaving the intervening minibasins as depressions. Second, when a diapir's salt supply wanes, the overlying dynamic salt bulge subsides, allowing a minibasin to form. Third, differential loading causes the thick end of a sedimentary wedge to sink faster into the salt, creating a sag. Spreading salt canopies can transport their dismembered roof fragments tens of kilometres basinward. These exotic fragments are up to 25 km in breadth and comprise anomalously old Mesozoic through Miocene sequences. Strata of the same age underlie the salt canopy or its welded equivalent, signalling lateral transport by thick salt.

Abstract The conceptual breakthroughs in understanding salt tectonics can be recognized by reviewing the history of salt tectonics, which divides naturally into three parts: the pioneering era, the fluid era, and the brittle era. The pioneering era (1856-1933) featured the search for a general hypothesis of salt diapirism, initially dominated by bizarre, erroneous notions of igneous activity, residual islands, in situ crystallization, osmotic pressures, and expansive crystallization. Gradually data from oil exploration constrained speculation. The effects of buoyancy versus orogeny were debated, contact relations were characterized, salt glaciers were discovered, and the concepts of downbuilding and differential loading were proposed as diapiric mechanisms. The fluid era (1933–1989) was dominated by the view that salt tectonics resulted from Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities in which a dense fluid overburden having negligible yield strength sinks into a less dense fluid salt layer, displacing it upward. Density contrasts, viscosity contrasts, and dominant wavelengths were emphasized, whereas strength and faulting of the overburden were ignored. During this era, palinspastic reconstructions were attempted; salt upwelling below thin overburdens was recognized; internal structures of mined diapirs were discovered; peripheral sinks, turtle structures, and diapir families were comprehended; flow laws for dry salt were formulated; and contractional belts on divergent margins and allochthonous salt sheets were recognized. The 1970s revealed the basic driving force of salt allochthons, intrasalt minibasins, finite strains in diapirs, the possibility of thermal convection in salt, direct measurement of salt glacial flow stimulated by rainfall, and the internal structure of convecting evaporites and salt glaciers. The 1980s revealed salt rollers, subtle traps, flow laws for damp salt, salt canopies, and mushroom diapirs. Modeling explored effects of regional stresses on domal faults, spoke circulation, and combined Rayleigh-Taylor instability and thermal convection. By this time, the awesome implications of increased reservoirs below allochthonous salt sheets had stimulated a renaissance in salt tectonic research. Blossoming about 1989, the brittle era is actually rooted in the 1947 discovery that a diapir stops rising if its roof becomes too thick. Such a notion was heretical in the fluid era. Stimulated by sandbox experiments and computerized reconstructions of Gulf Coast diapirs and surrounding faults, the onset of the brittle era yielded regional detachments and evacuation surfaces (salt welds and fault welds) along vanished salt allochthons, raft tectonics, shallow spreading, and segmentation of salt sheets. The early 1990s revealed rules of section balancing for salt tectonics, salt flats and salt ramps, reactive piercement as a diapiric initiator resulting from tectonic differential loading, cryptic thin-skinned extension, influence of sedimentation rate on the geometry of passive diapirs and extrusions, the importance of critical overburden thickness to the viability of active diapirs, fault-segmented sheets, counter-regional fault systems, subsiding diapirs, extensional turtle structure anticlines, and mock turtle structures.

Abstract Although the Neogene Red Sea basin has been intensively examined as the type example of a young, narrow ocean, salt tectonics there has been neglected. The Yemeni part of the Red Sea exhibits a wide array of salt tectonic features within a small area. Above the rift section, a middle Miocene evaporite layer, originally 1.5-2 km thick, is the source for autochthonous and allochthonous salt structures. In the middle-late Miocene, evaporite-clastic overburden, halite, and anhydrite layers 50-350 m thick assisted deformation by providing several levels for décollement. Four southward-narrowing tectonic zones trend subparallel to the basin axis. Areas of extension in the easternmost Roller Zone, severe shortening in the central Canopy Zone, and mild shortening in the western Anticline Zone all narrow then pinch out at roughly the same latitude. This convergence suggests that extension and contraction are linked by various salt layers and by transfer structures transecting the tectonic zones. Extension, contraction, and coeval salt canopy emplacement were superposed, mostly between 8 and 5 Ma. The presence of allochthonous salt sheets casts doubt on previous estimates of salt 5 km thick in the southern Red Sea. Fault scarp asperities in the basin floor may have acted as buttresses against which contraction was initiated. The wide variety of salt structures may be due to the weakness and anisotropy of the partially evaporitic overburden and to high geothermal gradients (up to 77°C/km). These factors enhanced the deformation driven by gravity spreading and sedimentary differential loading.