Rift basins of the Central Atlantic Margins (CAM) of North America andMorocco preserve largely continental sequences of sedimentary strata and lessimportant minor basalt flows spanning much of the early Mesozoic. The bestknown is the Newark basin of New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania where anastronomically calibrated magnetic polarity time scale is developed.

Lacustrine cycles of Milankovitch origin are commonly present in CAM basins,with the period changing from 10 ky (paleoequator with coals), to 20 ky(4°–10°N), to perhaps 40 ky northward with evaporites. Cycles of∼100 ky, 413 ky, and ∼2 my are also important.

Four mostly unconformity-bounded tectonostratigraphic sequences are present.The Anisian TS I is fluvial and eolian. TS II–TS IV (Late Triassic toEarly Jurassic) consist of “tripartite” lacustrine sequences causedby extension pulses. The Newark basin accumulation rate history allowscomparison with quantitative rift basin models.

The North American plate's slow northward drift resulted in a relativeshift of climate, although the rapid humidification during the latest Triassicand Early Jurassic is associated with a sea-level rise. The Triassic-Jurassicmass extinction is of independent origin, plausibly impact related.