Stratigraphic and geophysical maps of the northern and southern North Sea basin are used to study mechanisms of intracratonic basin formation. In northern areas of the North Sea, observed basement-fault extension, crustal thinning, present-day flexural rigidity, and tectonic subsidence are predicted reasonably well by a simple stretching model of basin formation with rifting phases during the Triassic and mid-Jurassic/Early Cretaceous. In southern areas of the North Sea, however, a similar an...