The Gulf Coast Onshore Offshore Experiment: Some preliminary results
The purpose of the Gulf Coast Onshore Offshore Experiment, which was carried out in cooperation with the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, was to determine crustal structure of a section across the Gulf Coast Geosyncline where the sediments are near maximum thickness. There is a longstanding difficulty in conceiving of a mechanism by which the deep sedimentary basins are formed. There appear to be two possibilities: (1) deposition of sediments on a continental crust which was downbuckled to accommodate them by some unknown means; or (2) that wherever the sediments were formed initially, they were finally deposited in deep water. In the latter case one would expect that they would be underlain by a thin oceanic crust.