Gondwana breakup: Messages from the North Natal Valley

The Natal Valley, offshore Mozambique, is a key area for understanding the evolution of East Gondwana. Within the scope of the integrated multidisciplinary PAMELA project, we present new wide-angle seismic data and interpretations, which considerably alter Geoscience paradigms. These data reveal the presence of a 30-km-thick crust that we argue to be of continental nature. This falsifies all the most recent palaeo-reconstructions of the Gondwana. This 30-km-thick continental crust 1,000 m below sea level implies a complex history with probable intrusions of mantle-derived melts in the lower crust, connected to several occurrences of magmatism, which seems to evidence the crucial role of the lower continental crust in passive margin genesis.