Kinematics of the South Atlantic rift

Abstract. The South Atlantic rift basin evolved as branch of a large Jurassic-Cretaceous intraplate rift zone between the African and South American plates during the final breakup of western Gondwana. While the relative motions between South America and Africa for post-breakup times are well5 resolved, many issues pertaining to the fit reconstruction and particular the relation between kinematics and lithosphere dynamics during pre-breakup remain unclear in currently published plate models. We have compiled and assimilated data from these intraplated rifts and constructed a revised10 plate kinematic model for the pre-breakup evolution of the South Atlantic. Based on structural restoration of the conju-gate South Atlantic margins and intracontinental rift basins in Africa and South America, we achieve a tight fit recon-struction which eliminates the need for previously inferred1