Basin-Edge Diapirism and Updip Salt Flow in Zechstein of Southern North Sea

Abstract

Some unusual and interesting structural geometries have been recognized on seismic lines recorded in the United Kingdom sector of the southern Permian basin of the North Sea. They seem to be the result of diapirism at the northern edge of the (Upper Permian) Zechstein salt basin, and involve the preservation of a 75 km (47 mi) long prism of a younger Mesozoic sequence replaced elsewhere by the widespread Jurassic/Cretaceous late Kimmerian unconformity. It is suggested that the diapiric features described are due to the movement of salt toward the basin edge having been dammed by a change in facies from basinal halite to shelf lithologies over a short distance.