Non-continental margins lack thick lavas that are generated as continental crust thins immediately prior to the onset of seafloor spreading. They may form up to 30 per cent of passive margins around the world. This volume contains papers examining an active margin, fossil margins that border present day oceans, and remnants of margins exposed today in the Alps. The papers present evidence across a range of scales, from individual mineral grains, through borelide cores and outcrop, to whole margins at the crustal scale.

A major rifting episode began in the Afar region of northern Ethiopia in September 2005. Over a ten-day period, c. 2.5 km3 of magma were intruded along a 60 km-long dyke separating the Arabian and Nubian plates. Over the next five years, a further 13 dyke intrusions caused continued extension, eruptions and seismicity. This activity led to a renewed international focus on the role of magmatism in rifting, with major international collaborative projects working in Afar and Ethiopia to study the ongoing activity and to place it in a broader context. This book brings together articles that explore the role of magmatism in rifting, from the initiation of continental break-up through to full seafloor spreading. We also explore the hazards related to rifting and the associated volcanism. This work has implications for our understanding of how continents break-up and the associated distribution of resources in rift basins and continental margins.

Rifted margins mark the transition between continents and oceans, which are the two first-order types of land masses on Earth. Rifted margins contribute to our understanding of lithospheric extensional processes and are studied by various disciplines of Earth Science (geology, geophysics, geochemistry). Thanks to better and wider public access to high-quality data, our understanding in these areas has improved significantly over these last two decades. This book summarizes this knowledge evolution and details where we stand today, with a series of case examples included. It is structured in a practical way, with concise text descriptions and comprehensive diagrams. Continental Rifted Margins 2 is a useful resource for students and newcomers to the rifted margin community – a "cookbook” of sorts to facilitate the reading of scientific publications and provide basic definitions and explanations.

The main focus of the book is the geological and geophysical interpretation of sedimentary basins along the South, Central and North Atlantic conjugate margins, but concepts derived from physical models, outcrop analogues and present-day margins are also discussed in some chapters. There is an encompassing description of several conjugate margins worldwide, based on recent geophysical and geological datasets. An overview of important aspects related to the geodynamic development and petroleum geology of Atlantic-type sedimentary basins is also included. Several chapters analyse genetic mechanisms and break-up processes associated with rift-phase structures and salt tectonics, providing a full description of conjugate margin basins based on deep seismic profiles and potential field methods.--