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Babalola & Gipson 1991
Babalola, O.O. and Gipson, M. (1991). Aeromagnetic anomalies and discordant lineations beneath the Niger Delta: Implication for new fracture zones and multiple sea-floor spreading directions in the “meso-Atlantic” Gulf of Guinea cul-de-sac. Geophysical Research Letters 18: doi: 10.1029/91GL01236. issn: 0094-8276.

An aeromagnetic contour map compiled over shallow water and onshore portions of the Nigerian continental margin, shows several elongate, long-wavelength anomaly closures with some alternating polarity, separated by steep gradient, NE lineations. The lineations are interpreted a new fracture of zones or extensions of previously mapped ones.

The NE trend in the western delta region is concordant with the fracture zones trends of the deeper Gulf of Guinea. Aeromagnetic lineations of the SE Niger Delta Basin however, discordantly trend ENE. Their termination against the former, is interpreted as evidence of early sea-floor spreading in a ENE-WSW direction in addition to the well documented NE-SW spreading of the Gulf of Guinea and the rest of the ''meso-Atlantic'' sea-floor.

The geophysical crustal structure indicate the existence of two Early Cretaceous triple junctions beneath the Niger Delta Basin. The two triple-junctions further support the hypothesis that the African conentinent was a multi-plate system (in the Niger Delta region) during the early opening of the Atlantic. ¿American Geophysical Union 1991

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Abstract

Keywords
Marine Geology and Geophysics, Plate tectonics, Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism, Spatial variations attributed to sea floor spreading, Exploration Geophysics, Oceanic structures, Geodesy and Gravity, Local gravity anomalies and crustal structure
Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/
Publisher
American Geophysical Union
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