Abstract The recent surge of exploration activities over distal margins, with the acquisition of more and more high-quality and deep seismic data, has led to enhance concepts of the deformation and subsidence history of passive margins in general and sheared margins in particular. The French Guiana sheared margin is very narrow. The thinning of the upper crust is accommodated by few major faults relayed by well-expressed transfer zones, giving a general oblique trend to the margin. Another possible effect of the shear component during the rifting is the presence in the distal domain of a Moho high. Its exhumation is coeval with the emplacement of a deltaic system coming from the Demerara Plateau, evidencing a probably important early subsidence of the margin. This early subsidence in the late-rifting stage is increased during the early drifting, when the thinned crust reached its isostatic/thermal equilibrium in the Cenomano-Turonian before suffering an important Late Cretaceous sedimentation load. In the Palaeogene, starving of the margin and significant uplifts in the Guiana Craton are observed, possibly resulting from the rise of the Purus Arch (Andes fore-bulge?). Finally, the Amazon deposition by the Late Miocene–Pliocene provoked a large subsidence in the distal domain.

Abstract The morphology of a 1250 km 2 portion of the middle slope off the western Niger Delta shows that gradients on the Pleistocene slope vary both spatially and at different stratigraphic levels. In the deeper section, three lower-gradient steps are connected by three higher-gradient ramps, generating a stepped-slope morphology. Through time, preferential accumulation of slope aprons, composed of mass-transport deposits, compensationally stacked lobes, and overbank deposits (wedge-shaped outer levees), helped fill slope accommodation, smoothing over the gradient change across ramps and steps, and vice versa. Consequently at the local scale, the stepped slope evolved into a smoother slope that is nearly graded at the modern seafloor. As in other studies, preferential accumulation of sediment on the slope is believed to reflect in part the deceleration of sediment gravity flows (both turbidity currents and debris flows) as they encountered lower-gradient steps. Down-slope changes in slope morphology also caused variations in the amount, and presumably rate, of erosion along the axes of canyons in the study area—with increased incision depth where knickpoints cut through positive-relief bathymetric structures in an attempt to establish a graded profile. Along the Benin-major Canyon there is an inverse linear relationship between the thickness of deposits that accumulate on the slope adjacent to the canyon and the amount of vertical erosion along its axis. The thickest outer levee deposits coincide with canyon segments that have the shallowest incision, in turn corresponding to slope segments showing a sharp decrease in pre-incision gradient. This implies that the increase in sediment flux to outer levees on some parts of the stepped slope results from a combination of increased overspill from flows passing through shallower canyon reaches, and increased sedimentation caused as mud-dominated flows decelerated on lower-gradient slope segments immediately adjacent to the canyon. Thus there appears to be an intimate relationship between slope morphology, canyon incision depth, and the thickness of overbank deposits adjacent to canyons.