Not all continental rifts evolve to the stage of continental breakup and seafloor spreading. Some rifts evolve rapidly to their final stage and result in continental separation and seafloor spreading. Others take 10’s of million years to localize and initiate seafloor spreading systems.

This session would like to focus on new research that integrates geological, geochemical, geophysical datasets to address questions regarding: (i) the processes that influence the early stages of rift development, segmentation, localization, and why some rifts fail while others succeed. (ii) Whether young narrow rifted margins (e.g. Red Sea, Gulf of Aden) are geologically, geochemically, geodynamically distinct from mature evolved passive margins.
We invite contributions and examples from present-day rift systems, failed rift arms and fossil margins. We would encourage studies covering a range of tectonic regimes including, active-passive, volcanic, magma-poor, orthogonal, oblique and sheared rift basins.