Continent-ocean boundary

The Continent-ocean boundary (COB) or continent-ocean transition is the boundary between continental crust and oceanic crust on a passive margin. The identification of continent-ocean boundaries is important in the definition of plate boundaries at the time of break-up when trying to reconstruct the geometry and position of ancient continents e.g. in the reconstruction of Pangaea.

As hydrocarbon exploration moves further offshore to look for the remaining potential on passive margins, understanding the location of the COB is critical to predicting possible hydrocarbon occurrence. This is both from the likely location of source and reservoir rocks and the need to model the thermal effects of break-up in basin modelling

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