The discovery and subsequent mapping of an ancient shoreline at 25 m depth in N-E Brazil by TM-Landsat imagery is described. The study area is located on a technically stable part of the Brazilian shelf which presently shows a minor uplift rate of 0-2 mm year−1, to the north of Natal in the State of Rio Grande do Norte. This submerged shoreline is characterized by the occurrence of a large number of long beachrock outcrops (>3km in length), observed by diving, which are comparable to their analogues seen on the present-day beaches of the adjacent coast. The good state of preservation of this shoreline and the large number of carbonate rock ‘reefs’ on it suggest abruptness of a return to transgressive sea-level trend with high growth rates subsequent to a long-lived sea-level relating to the 11000-9000 yr b.p. band. By reviewing high resolution paleoclimatic data from this period, we conjecture that this stillstand could be a consequence of the Younger Dryas cold event in the north Atlantic, which might have also had importance as a driving morphogenctic process for coasts in a global scale.