The Borborema and Benin–Nigeria Provinces are composed of a complex network of Neoproterozoic mobile belts, and large-scale shear zones. The evolution of the South Atlantic Cretaceous Rift System was controlled by the structural inheritance of the Borborema and Benin–Nigeria Provinces. The process of lithospheric rupture began and ended around the Borborema and Benin–Nigeria Provinces, which behaved as a “lithospheric relay ramp” and act as the main obstacle to the opening of the South Atlantic. The onset of rifting, and the onset of sea floor spreading are diachronic complex, and spatiotemporal. At the spatial domain, the basins can be described by groups of marginal basins with genetic links to eleven oceanic transform faults, distributed along three rift branches and twelve rift zones, grouped at six structural segments and aborted rift arms. In the time domain, five chronological rift stages are here identified as the result of sorting 33 “tectonic-related events”, that affect the tectono-stratigraphic record of each one of these basins. Oceanic crust initiation was diachronic with emplacement initiating at three times from south to north: (i) at 130 Ma, seafloor spreading begin south of Florianópolis fracture zone; (ii) after salt deposition (113 Ma), between Florianópolis and Bode Verde fracture zone; and (iii) at the end of Albian (~110 Ma), between Bode Verde and Chain fracture zone, and at the entire Equatorial Branch. Not until the end of Albian (~110 Ma) a full, continuous, and stable mid-ocean ridge was established. The time and space distribution of LIP's and the St. Helena and Tristan da Cunha hotspots trails on the Brazilian side allowed us to corroborate these timings within our model. Upper crustal structures did not play a decisive role in the rift compartmentation at the Equatorial and Orthogonal branches, where lithospheric processes controlled the final plate boundaries.