The E5 transect extends southeastward from the Cumberland Plateau across the Appalachian orogen, the Atlantic Coastal Plain, Continental Shelf and Slope, and the Blake Plateau Basin; it is a transect through the Precambrian-early Paleozoic and Mesozoic-Tertiary continental margins of North America. The transect consists primarily of a 100-km-wide geologic strip map, a cross section, and supporting geophysical data. The cross section is based on surface geology, surface and subsurface data from Coastal Plain and offshore drill holes, shipboard and aeromagnetic data, and gravity and seismic reflection data, including the ADCOH and COCORP southern Appalachians lines. Elements of the map and cross section include: (1) the Appalachian foreland fold-thrust belt and western Blue Ridge Late Proterozoic-Paleozoic continental margin; (2) the eastern Blue Ridge-Chauga belt-Inner Piedmont oceanic-continental fragment terrane; (3) the volcanicplutonic Carolina terrane containing the middle to late Paleozoic high-grade Kiokee belt; and (4) a major geophysical ly defined terrane beneath the Coastal Plain. Three Paleozoic sutures may be present along the section line: the Hayesville thrust, the Inner Piedmont-Carolina terrane boundary (Taconic or Acadian suture?), and an eastern boundary of the Carolina terrane (Alleghanian? suture) in the subsurface beneath the Coastal Plain. The modern continental margin consists of the terrestrial clastics-filled Triassic-Jurassic basins and offshore marine Jurassic- Cretaceous clastic-carbonate bank succession overlain by younger Cretaceous and Tertiary sediments. Above the Late Cretaceous onshore unconformity lie Cenozoic sediments that represent seaward prograding of the shelf-slope, truncated by Miocene to recent wave abrasion and currents.