Date of Award

4-2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

First Advisor

James G. Ogg

Committee Chair

James G. Ogg

Committee Member 1

Lawrence W. Braile

Committee Member 2

Robert L. Now

Abstract

As hydrocarbon development in Africa and South America continues to expand, understanding the geologic evolution as well as the geologic symmetry of each of the continent's coastal basins grows increasingly important. Unfortunately, there's currently no comprehensive database that contains the stratigraphic record, depositional environments, and tectonic evolution available for either Africa or South America. Therefore, the goal of my research is to create an extensive datapack and guide booklet for Africa's major sedimentary basins, complete the South America datapack that's currently being constructed, and correlate the western African conjugate basins to the eastern South American conjugate basins. To accomplish this, lithological, tectonic, and economic data have been compiled for each basin, and inserted into a datapack using a program called TSCreator. TSCreator is an earth history visualization software that allows users to build and compare datapacks to the 2012 Geologic Time Scale as well as other datapacks in a standardized format. Additionally, the program's new map pack feature displays the location of each basin as well as the basins' datapoints on a regional map, allowing easy visualization of geographic relationships of geologic data within each basin. The long-term goal for this project is to combine the Africa and South America datapacks with the previously compiled Australia-India TSCreator datapacks to produce the first Gondwana geologic visualization datasuite. This suite will provide a detailed reconstruction of the sedimentary record during the formation of the supercontinent in the Paleozoic and its subsequent breakup into the modern continents during the Jurassic to the present.

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