The Canarian Archipelago is built on the African continental

slope and rise and extends 450 km from east to west (Fig. 1). The vol-canic aprons surrounding the islands consist of material derived through volcanic activity, slides, and erosion on the islands, interca-lated to the background sedimentation. The aprons south of the Ca-nary Islands contain slumped material from the African continental margin (von Rad, Ryan, et al., 1979; Schmincke, Weaver, Firth, et al., 1995), contrasting the northern basin, which is shielded from such in-flux by the East Canary Ridge (Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, and Con-ception Bank), forming a morphological barrier. The sedimentary ba-sin north of the Canary Islands extends ~200 km up to the Selvagem Islands, corresponding to the lateral extent of the moat because of the load of the Canary Islands (Watts, 1994). High-resolution seismic reflection data collected during Meteor Cruise 24 over the northern apron of Gran Canaria (Fig. 2) offer the opportunity to extrapolate the one-dimensional drilling results at Sites 953 and 954 across the apron up to a distance of 100 km from the shore. Correlation with the bio- and magnetostratigraphy at the drill sites was obtained by synthetic seismograms that were matched to the observed seismic data (Funck and Lykke-Andersen, Chap. 1, this volume; Funck, 1996). The aim of this study was to analyze the structure of the volcanic apron north of Gran Canaria, whose volcaniclastic deposits contain a record of the evolution of Gran Canaria and the two neighboring is-lands, Fuerteventura and Tenerife. The goal was to broaden the knowledge about the volcanic evolution of these islands, to deter-mine their submarine dimensions, to study how the volcanism and erosion is reflected in the surrounding sediments, and to detect large mass-wasting events associated with the destruction of the islands