Distinctive sedimentary rock associations form at continent-ocean boundaries within plates. Typically they are thick, relatively continuous successions of mainly shale, sandstone and limestone, that were deposited just oceanward of the continent on a floor of stretched, thinned, continental crust which is transitional to oceanic crust. The strata generally can be traced laterally in one direction into thinner, less continuous, shallow-water sequences on continental crust, and in the other, into deep water strata on oceanic crust.

A modern example of a within-plate continent-ocean boundary is the eastern margin of the North America' continent, where the transition from continental to oceanic crust is covered by a thick sequence of sediments eroded from the continent and deposited in the ocean basin. An ancient example, perhaps one of the most complete in the world, is the over 15 kilometre thick succession of latest Proterozoic to early Mesozoic limestone, shale and sandstone deposited over a period of 500 million years, that occurs in the Rocky Mountains (or Foreland Belt) and the Columbia and Purcell mountains (of the southern Omineca Belt).