Neotectonic reactivation of shear zones and implications for faulting style and geometry in the continental margin of NE Brazil

• We compare airborne aeromagnetic and field data.
• Faults reactivate basement shear zones along the Brazilian margin.
• Faults control sediment deposition and topography in the Neogene–Quaternary.

The eastern continental margin of South America comprises a series of rift basins developed during the breakup of Pangea in the Jurassic–Cretaceous. We integrated high resolution aeromagnetic, structural and stratigraphic data in order to evaluate the role of reactivation of ductile, Neoproterozoic shear zones in the deposition and deformation of post-rift sedimentary deposits in one of these basins, the Paraíba Basin in northeastern Brazil. This basin corresponds to the last part of the South American continent to be separated from Africa during the Pangea breakup. Sediment deposition in this basin occurred in the Albian–Maastrichtian, Eocene–Miocene, and in the late Quaternary. However, our investigation concentrates on the Miocene–Quaternary, which we consider the neotectonic period because it encompasses the last stress field. This consisted of an E–W-oriented compression and a N–S-oriented extension. The basement of the basin forms a slightly seaward-tilted ramp capped by a late Cretaceous to Quaternary sedimentary cover ~ 100–400 m thick. Aeromagnetic lineaments mark the major steeply-dipping, ductile E–W- to NE-striking shear zones in this basement. The ductile shear zones mainly reactivated as strike-slip, normal and oblique-slip faults, resulting in a series of Miocene–Quaternary depocenters controlled by NE-, E–W-, and a few NW-striking faults. Faulting produced subsidence and uplift that are largely responsible for the present-day morphology of the valleys and tablelands in this margin. We conclude that Precambrian shear zone reactivation controlled geometry and orientation, as well as deformation of sedimentary deposits, until the Neogene–Quaternary.