Seismic Reflection Images of the Pre-Mesozoic Crust in France and Adjacent Areas

The contribution of deep seismic profiling to our understanding of the pre-Mesozoic crust in France and adjacent areas is of the utmost importance. Despite limitations which will be discussed in Section 1.2, the method can obtain images of the crust down to and deeper than 50 km. It is the only way to observe the deep structure of the crust in some detail, to identify features such as thrusts, decollements or detachments, decoupling levels, deep faults, etc., to trace the Mohorovicic Discontinuity and image upper mantle discontinuities in favorable cases.