ABSTRACT
Between the years 1978–1993, some hundred commercial wells have drilled thick, rift-related, mainly non-marine depositional sequences in central and southern Sudan. Regional studies relate initial rift basin development in Sudan to the early break-up phase of the South Atlantic. The initial break-up of Gondwana was its Middle-Late Jurassic split into a western continental block, consisting of Africa and South America, and an eastern continental block comprising Madagascar, India, Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand. During the middle Jurassic to Neocomian opening history of the proto-Indian Ocean, ridge-push and deviatoric tensional stresses induced important intra-plate transtensional deformations into the Afro-Arabian domain. Schandelmeier argued for constructively interfering geodynamic processes of Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous mantle pluming in Sudan and contemporaneous oceanic rifting of the proto-Indic, which produced more or less E-W extending basins. Adjacent to the rift zone anorogenic alkaline complexes were emplaced. The most important group of extrusive volcanics is concentrated along mainly N trending syn-rift border faults in the Khartoum basin.
