Relative motions between Eurasia and North America in the Bering Sea region

• Main Authors: Harbert, W, Frei, LS, Cox, A, Engebretson, DC
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 1987
• Subjects: Bering Sea; Anadyr; Anadyr’; Bering Shelf; Khatyrka; Anadyr'; Alaska
• Online Access: http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/13589/; http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/13589/1/licence.txt

Knowledge of the relative motion of the North American and Eurasian plates during the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic provides insight into the observed timing and style of deformational events in the Bering Sea region. Periods of strong convergence from ≈ 70 to ≈ 50 Ma (Maastrichtian to Paleocene) are correlated with compressional deformation between the Chukotsk Peninsula and northern Alaska and movement along the Denali fault. The convergence may also be the cause of a previously proposed counterclockwise rotation of western Alaska. Transform motion between these plates from 50 to 38 Ma (Middle to Late Eocene) correlates with subsidence of the Bering Shelf, creation of a series of pull-apart basins along the Bering margin and cessation of calc-alkaline volcanism in western Alaska. Slight compressive convergence from 37 Ma to the present may be responsible for the anticlinal deformation of basin filling sediments in the Anadyr and Khatyrka basins. © 1987.