Salt tectonics in an intracontinental transform setting: Cumberland and Sackville basins, southern New Brunswick, Canada Simon Craggs, * , † Dave Keighley, * John W. F. Waldron‡ and Adrian Park* *Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada †SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada ‡Department of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada ABSTRACT Salt tectonics have markedly influenced the rapid evolution of the Upper Palaeozoic Cumberland Basin of Atlantic Canada, including the ca. 5 km-thick Mississippian – Pennsylvanian stratigraphic succession exposed along the UNESCO World Heritage coastline at Joggins, Nova Scotia. A diapiric salt wall is exposed in the Minudie Anticline to the north of the Joggins section on the Maringouin Peninsula of New Brunswick, which corresponds to the fault-bounded northern margin of the Cum- berland Basin. The salt wall is of Visean evaporites of the Windsor Gp that originally were buried by red-beds of the Mabou Gp in the Serpukhovian, and later by fluvial and floodplain strata (Boss Point Fm, Cumberland Gp) in the Yeadonian (mid-Bashkirian, Early Pennsylvanian). Folds and faults in the Boss Point and overlying basal Little River formations are truncated by an angular unconformity at the base of overlying red-beds of the Grande Anse Fm. Re-evaluation of the palynological data delimits the Grande Anse Fm as Langsettian, providing a tight constraint of less than 2 myr on the timing of deformation. Diversion of palaeoflows by the rising salt structure, noted in previous work on the upper Boss Point Fm, occurs to the north of the diapiric anticline. This is interpreted to sig- nify the development of a mini-basin on commencement of diapirism once a ~1.5 km-thick succes- sion of clastic strata had buried the salt. Faults and folds in the succession below the unconformity indicate an initial phase of dextral transpressive strike-slip motion, which may have promoted haloki- nesis. Reverse faults indicate shortening associated with northward development and overturn of the Minudie Anticline during transpression; subsequent normal faulting was associated with collapse of the sediment pile and underlying salt structure. INTRODUCTION Salt tectonics involves the basin-scale movement of salt and related evaporite rock (Hudec & Jackson, 2007) into various domes, diapirs and walls. This also may result in the rapid accumulation of a thick sediment pile above salt welds that typically form in the adjacent basin depocen- tres (e.g. Jackson & Talbot, 1986; Hudec et al., 2009; Waldron et al., 2013). Increasingly these salt basins are global targets for petroleum exploration (Hudec & Jack- son, 2007; Matthews et al., 2007). However, to date there are limited documented outcrop analogues of salt-influ- enced nonmarine basins from which industry might develop sedimentological and structural models. Banham & Mountney (2013a) have reviewed the few studies of flu- vial drainage patterns, and hence reservoir geometries, where drainage was diverted by ongoing halokinesis. Lit- tle work has detailed salt tectonism in a primarily strike- slip setting (but see, for example Talbot & Aftabi, 2004; Can erot et al., 2005; Smit et al., 2008; and references therein). As noted by Claringbould et al. (2013), neither has there been much documented outcrop work on (sub-) seismic-scale brittle-structure geometries in the sediment adjacent to diapiric salt (‘external shear zones’, Jackson & Talbot, 1994; ‘drag zones’, Alsop et al., 2000), features that act as important fluid conduits or barriers (de Keijzer et al., 2007). This contribution documents part of the Upper Palaeo- zoic Cumberland Basin of Atlantic Canada (Fig. 1). The basin includes the UNESCO World Heritage (geological) coastline at Joggins, which was first investigated in the 1840s (e.g. Lyell, 1843; Dawson, 1845; Logan, 1845). Recent papers (Ryan & Boehner, 1994; Calder et al., 2005; Davies et al., 2005; Waldron & Rygel, 2005; Rygel et al., 2008; Allen et al., 2011, 2013; Waldron et al., 2013) have shown that the extreme stratigraphic thick- ness, fluvial architecture and rapid evolution of this basin have been strongly influenced by salt tectonics, and include seismic interpretation of salt evacuation and formation of a salt weld at depth. North of Joggins, the Correspondence: Dave Keighley, Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada. E-mail: keig@unb.ca © 2015 The Authors Basin Research © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers and International Association of Sedimentologists 266 Basin Research (2017) 29, 266–283, doi: 10.1111/bre.12152 EAGE