The result of a session at the 1981 AAPG Annual Meeting, this volume attempts to document global age and magnitude of sea-level shifts, and ultimately, the cause of the short-term shifts. Twelve individual papers were published on topics such as: comparative anatomy of cratonic unconformities; relation of unconformities, tectonics, and sea-level change; outcrop features and origin of basin margin unconformities; significant unconformities and the hiatuses represented by them; regional unconformities and depositional cycles; relative sea-level changes during the Middle and Late Cretaceous; Late Oligocene-Pliocene transgressive-regressive cycles of sedimentation; oxygen-isotope record of ice-volume history; oceanic ridge volumes and sea-level change; Jurassic unconformities, chronostratigraphy, and sea-level changes; Cenozoic regional arosion of the Abyssal sea floor; and depositional sequences and stratigraphic gaps on submerged United States Atlantic margin.