Geological perspectives of the East Greenland continental margin

• Main Author: Hans Christian Larsen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Greenland; Kolbeinsey; Kolbeinsey Ridge; Senja; East Greenland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.464.8649; http://2dgf.dk/xpdf/bull29-01-02-77-101.pdf

The East Greenland continental margin can be divided into a northern area showing evidence for plate separation and sutiuing of Hudsonian, Grenvillian and Caledonian ages followed by post-Late Caledonian molasse sedimentation and Mesozoic rifting, and a southern area which apparently formed a cratonic block from the Early Proterozoic to the Middle Cretaceous. The whole margin was finally separated from the NW Eiu'opean margin by sea floor spreading in the latest Paleocene to earliest Eocene and now forms a rifted passive margin. The Tertiary consists of thin pre-drift sediments overlain by 1-7 km of Late Paleocene basaltic lavas extruded immediately prior to active spreading. Subsequent subsidence of the shelf led to accumulation of 2-8 km of post-basaltic sediments offshore whereas the land area was uplifted 1—2 km. Initiation of spreading along the Kolbeinsey Ridge during the late Oligocène was accompanied by renewed tectonism within the middle part of the margin. Finally the shelf was characterized by strong progradation during the Miocene. Backwards rotation of the inferred ocean-to-continent transition, through the total pole of opening, favours a slightly modified Talwani and Eldholm pole which provides a pre-drift fit of the two margins with no major overlap or gaps between the southern tip of Greenland and the Greenland-Senja Fracture Zone. Comparison of the Greenland margin and the Varing Plateau implies a genesis for the latter, different from that proposed by Talwani and Eldholm. Minor revisions of