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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

CSPG Special Publications

Abstract


Canada's Continental Margins and Offshore Petroleum Exploration — Memoir 4, 1975
Pages 589-611
Arctic Ocean Margins

The Tectonic Development of the Southern Beaufort Sea and Its Relationship to the Origin of the Arctic Ocean Basin

C. J. Yorath, D. K. Norris

Abstract

Seismic reflection and gravity data suggest that the structural and stratigraphic framework of the northern Canadian Cordillera and adjacent Interior Platform continue seaward onto the continental shelf along the southern rim of the Beaufort Sea. The structural style of the region, manifested in faults with reverse, strike and normal separations, is related to:

1. An array of Early Cretaceous, right-lateral faults which lies on the extension of the Kaltag Fault, and continues onto Beaufort Shelf. There, in addition to strike-slip displacement, many faults have normal separations with their southeast sides down.

2. Late Cretaceous and Tertiary extensional faults on the northwest flank of the Aklavik Arch which complement the Early Cretaceous array and resulted in the development of a structural depression between these two temporally and spatially separated families of faults. Collectively they provided a site for the deposition of the thick, Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary molassoid succession in the vicinity of the modern Mackenzie Delta.

This faulting may be related to the initial, asymmetric opening of the Arctic Ocean Basin during the Mesozoic about an axis approximately parallel to and seaward from the northern continental margin. A re-evaluation of magnetic and gravity information in the northern Queen Elizabeth Islands, in addition to rationalizing the structures of the southern Beaufort Sea in terms of such an opening, suggests that the Upper Cretaceous and Tertiary succession along the southern rim of the Beaufort Sea developed in response to extensional tectonics along the continental margin.


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