The Carboniferous Lisburne Group of northern Alaska formed as an extensive carbonate platform which stretched from westernmost Alaska (Lisburne Peninsula) across the northern Brooks Range and eastward into Canada, The Lisburne Group and associated rocks were deformed as part of the Brooks Range fold and thrust belt during Jurassic to Cretaceous and younger orogenies. In the northeastern Brooks Range, the Lisburne Group is parautochthonous and analogous to that at Prudhoe Bay. To the south and west, the Lisburne Group and associated rocks are allochthonous, having been tectonically transported from the south to their present positions within the Brooks Range orogenic belt. The great stratigraphic similarities between the Lisburne Group of the northeastern Brooks Range and Prudhoe Bay indicate that they formed in similar depositional settings, possibly along an extension of the ancestral Barrow Arch.

The Franklinian paleogeography unconformably beneath the Ellesmerian Sequence has influenced sedimentation patterns in the Lisburne Group. The transgressive Endicott (Kekiktuk Formation and Kayak Shale) and Lisburne Groups thin northward over Franklinian basement highs. In the Sadlerochit Mountains, the Katakturuk Dolomite formed a paleotopographic high over which the Endicott Group pinched out and the Lisburne Group thinned. To the south, the Endicott Group is thicker and the Kayak Shale has served as a decollement horizon. The Devonian Okpilak Granite formed another paleotopographic high directly overlain by the Lisburne Group.

At the base of the Lisburne Group, the lower part of the Mississippian Alapah Formation formed shoals which alternated with intervals of terrigenous shale and local quartzose sandstone. In the eastern Sadlerochit Mountains, the lowest Alapah Formation and localized exposures of the Itkilyariak Formation contain basal lag deposits that link them to the underlying pre-Mississippian rocks from which they were derived. Near the Okpilak Granite, an interval of very fine fossiliferous quartzose sandstone with lesser channelized lenticular beds of very coarse granular quartz sandstone occurs in the basal Lisburne Group, representing a significant clastic influx. Locally, near Leffingwell Ridge, quartzose sands formed a relative stable substrate for the development of small bioherms, possibly patch reefs, within an otherwise shaly sequence of the Kayak Shale.

The upper part of the Alapah Formation is mostly comprised of dark-colored lime mudstone and dolomite. Calcite and quartz-filled geodes after gypsum nodules indicate in hypersaline restricted lagoonal to arid supratidal conditions. Collapse breccias also occur but the unit is generally poorly exposed, limiting our knowledge of these rocks. The contact with light-colored, cliff-forming limestones of the lower Wahoo is typically sharp possibly unconformable in the north but is more gradational in the south (eg. the Wahoo type section).

The Mississippian lower Wahoo Formation is a cliff-forming unit composed of limestones containing abundant bryozoa and echinoderms (crinoids) which formed in open marine conditions. The unit is plagued by problems in stratigraphic nomenclature, having been referred to as both the Wahoo and the Alapah Limestone in previous literature. Because it is most similar to the type section of the Wahoo Formation, we refer to it as the lower Wahoo Formation. A sharp contact at the top of the unit and local erosional channels could possibly indicate an unconformity at the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian boundary.

The Pennsylvanian upper Wahoo Formation formed as an ooid shoal complex comprised of numerous shallowing-upward cycles which are analogous to lithologic cycles occurring in major hydrocarbon reservoirs at Prudhoe Bay. Biostratigraphic and lithologic correlation of these widespread, laterally persistent cycles provide an excellent means of subdividing the unit to understand its paleogeography and internal structure. The shoal complex apparently extended from Prudhoe Bay across the Sadlerochit Mountains and Fourth Range, across Leffingwell Ridge and on toward the Canadian border.

The top of the Lisburne Group is marked by a profound unconformity beneath the Permian Echooka Formation. Much of the upper part of the upper Wahoo Formation has been removed by erosion beneath the Echooka Formation with the greatest depths of erosion occurring in the western Sadlerochit and Shublik Mountains. Pre-Echooka erosion may have cut even deeper farther to the south in the allochthonous Lisburne Group. Most of the published data indicate that the entire Pennsylvanian part of the allochthonous Lisburne Group is missing due to erosion and/or non-deposition. However, recently obtained age dates suggest that Pennsylvanian limestones may be more widespread than previously recognized.