Intracratonic basins form within stable continental interiors, such as in the Michigan/Illinois

basins in the Middle West, the Moscow basin on the Russian platform and the Congo basin in
Africa. They are typically relatively shallow, circular in shape and have long histories of
relatively slow subsidence.

Continental rift basins form narrow, elongate basins within continental interiors, such as those
found in East Africa. Rapid subsidence during rifting, typically lasting 10's millions of years,
may be followed by a long period of slower subsidence, as for example in the North Sea basin,
which was an active rift in the Mesozoic. Other well-known recent examples include the Basin
and Range province in the southwestern U.S.A. and the Baikal rift in Siberia.

Passive margin basins contain some of the world's largest sediment accumulations, often more
than 20 km thick, especially where they are fed by large river systems, such as in the Mississippi
and Bengal fans.

Forearc, interarc and backarc basins form at active continental margins in association with
subduction and the development of island arcs. Numerous examples occur around the Pacific.

Foreland basins occur in continental collision zones as elongate depressions adjacent to actively
forming mountain belts, such as the Andes, Rockies, Alps and Himalayas. The development of
foreland basins is intimately related to the tectonic evolution of the mountains and ceases when
mountain building comes to an end.

Pull-apart basins form in areas undergoing transform, strike-slip tectonics. They are narrow,
deep basins that often show extremely fast subsidence, as typified by the basins along the San
Andreas fault-zone in California.

The table shows a modern classification of sedimentary basin from Ingersoll (1988):

Ingersoll R.V. 1988. Tectonics of sedimentary basins. Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull. 100, 1704-1719.