The transition to the ice-house world began in the late Eocene (Miller, et al., 1991) and was associated with a new phase of deposition on the mid Atlantic margin. Sediments on the shelf shifted from carbonate-rich clays to siliciclastics beginning onshore in the late middle Eocene, and culminating on the modern continental slope at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary (Miller, et al., 1998). The sediments also changed the nature of the shelf from a carbonate ramp to a prograding siliciclastic margin that fully developed by the latest Oligocene (~27 Ma pulse; Miller, et al., 1997) to early Miocene.
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