North Atlantic contourites: an overview

Abstract

Summary We present a brief overview of known bottom circulation and Tertiary to Recent sediment drifts in the North Atlantic Ocean, and outline the distinctive features of contourite sediments recovered from these drifts. There is a gradation of structural and textural characteristics between the finer-grained clayey and muddy contourites and the coarser-grained silty and fine-sandy contourites. There is also a gradation between the three compositional types identified: biogenic, mixed biogenic/terrigenous, and volcanogenic. Other features such as microfabric, or facies sequences are less well documented but potentially diagnostic.