Dredged Bedrock Samples from the Amerasia Basin, Arctic Ocean

• Main Authors: Brumley, Kelley, Mukasa, Sam B., O'Brien, T M, Mayer, Larry A., Chayes, D
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository 2013
• Subjects: Arctic Ocean; Amerasian basin; bedrock; dredging; Earth Sciences; Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology; Arctic; Svalbard; Ellesmere Island; Amerasia Basin; Chukchi Borderland; First Rock; Chukchi; Extended Continental Shelf Project; ice covered waters
• Online Access: https://scholars.unh.edu/ccom/695; http://abstractsearch.agu.org/meetings/2013/FM/OS13B-1703.html

Between 2008-2012, as part of the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf project in the Amerasia Basin, Arctic Ocean, 17 dredges were successfully collected sampling the first rock outcrops in the Chukchi Borderland and surrounding regions for the purpose of describing the geologic nature of the bathymetric features in this area. Multiple lines of evidence indicate that the specimens were collected from submarine rock exposures and were not samples of ice rafted debris, common in the ice covered waters of the Arctic Ocean. Using the USCGC Healy, each dredge was collected along very steep slopes (>35 degrees) measured with high resolution multibeam swath bathymety data. Each haul yielded samples of similar lithologies and identical metamorphic grade with manganese crusts on the surfaces exposed to seawater and fresh surfaces where the rocks were broken from outcrop. High tension pulls on the dredge line also indicated sampling of bedrock exposures. Dredged samples from a normal fault scarp in the central Chukchi Borderland consisted of Silurian (c. 430 Ma) orthogneisses that intruded older (c. 487-500 Ma) gabbros and luecogranties that were all metamorphosed to amphibolite grade (Brumley et al., 2011). Samples from the northern Northwind Ridge consisted of metasediments (greenschist facies) interpreted to have been deposited in a proximal arc setting with detrital zircon U-Pb age peaks at 434, 980 Ma with lesser peaks between 500-600, 1100-2000 Ma, and rare 2800 Ma grains (Brumley et al, 2010). Other dredges in the region of the Northwind Ridge yielded deformed and metamorphosed calcareous sandstones and low-grade phyllites (O'Brien et al., 2013). Taken together these rocks indicate a relationship to the Pearya Terrane of northern Ellesmere Island and S.W. Svalbard that were thought to represent a Cambro-Ordovician volcanic arc terrane that was involved in Caledonian orogenesis (Brumley et al., 2011). These findings constrain plate tectonic reconstruction models and bring into question long held ideas that the ...