About This Item

Share This Item

The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 68 (1984)

Issue: 4. (April)

First Page: 508

Last Page: 508

Title: Sedimentation and Tectonics of Diffuse Plate Boundary: Canadian Arctic Islands from 80 Ma to Present: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Andrew D. Miall

Abstract:

Use of a revised magnetic-anomaly time scale provides a more accurate chronology of sea-floor spreading events in the Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay. New stratigraphic data from the Meighen and Remus basins in the eastern Arctic Islands show that sedimentary and tectonic events there can be correlated with relative movements of Greenland between 80 and 36 Ma caused by Labrador Sea-Baffin Bay spreading. Within the eastern Arctic Islands these movements generated the Eurekan orogeny across the diffuse Greenland-Canada plate boundary.

Three discrete phases of movement have been recognized: (1) oblique compression, culminating in late Paleocene thrust faulting and fanglomerate progradation; (2) transcurrent movement from late Paleocene to mid Eocene; (3) near-orthogonal compression during the major deformation phase of the orogeny in the late Eocene to early Oligocene. Clastic depositional systems show numerous lateral facies changes reflecting the various movement styles.

From the Oligocene to mid Miocene, the Arctic Islands were affected by uplift and erosion. Extensional faulting and renewed clastic sedimentation occurred between 15 Ma and the present, and during this final phase the Arctic Islands area was fragmented into its present physiography of mainly fault-bounded islands.

End_of_Article - Last_Page 508------------

Copyright 1997 American Association of Petroleum Geologists