Invited review: Contribution of the Scottish Offshore to the advancement of geology

Since the late 1960s, the search for hydrocarbons in the seas around Scotla nd has led to an enormous increase in geological knowledge. In addition to new data related directly to the origins and entrapment of hydrocarbons, th e geology of Scotland can now be linked to that of Scandinavia and other pa rts of adjacent Western Europe via rock sequences in the Central and Northe rn North Sea which, especially for the Mesozoic and Tertiary, are mostly no t represented on the Scottish land surface. Part of the 'missing' history o f Scotland during that time span can now be deduced from the surrounding of fshore geology. Apart from the valuable stratigraphical input, important ne w information has been gained on aspects of sedimentology (e.g. the distrib ution of Late Permian evaporites and Early Tertiary turbidites) and structu ral geology. The previously unknown Central-Viking Graben, trending roughly N-S, began to form in the mid-Permian along the 'median line' between Brit ain and the continent, and was subsequently infilled with Permian sediments , now locally at depths in excess of 10 km. High quality, closely constrain ed seismic data have shown up previously unknown patterns of extensional an d transtensional faults in three dimensions.