In this paper an attempt has been made to reconstruct successively earlier configurations of lithosphere plates and their constituent parts, as related to the Barents Shelf. This involved a brief investigation of some possible past relations between Spitsbergen and the northwestern Eurasian plates, Greenland, the Canadian Arctic Islands, and the intervening seas and ocean basins. The restoration of observed crustal strains from structural and geophysical evidence were tested in each case for stratigraphical consistency of the implied reconstructions.

Working backward in time the study begins by reversing the late Phanerozoic spreading of the Norwegian and Greenland Sea basins of the Atlantic Ocean and the Eurasian basin of the Arctic Ocean. This leads to familiar reconstructions of Triassic/Permian paleogeology, with Spitsbergen adjacent to North Greenland and Ellesmere Island. There are some alternative reconstructions which have been rejected.

The restoration of Paleozoic displacements depend mainly on different interpretations of the Caledonides (especially the amount of closing and the amount of sinistral transcurrence involved). Relations between these structures, the North Greenland and Innuitian fold belts, the Lomonsov Ridge, and the Uralides, for instance, are critical.

There are more speculative possibilities for unravelling late Precambrian movements. The development of

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the North Atlantic geosyncline, in relation both to alternative models for a proto-Atlantic Ocean basin, and to late pre-Cambrian diastrophism as variously inferred has been considered.

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