High-latitude evaporites--late Proterozoic through Early Permian--are widespread in Canada, Siberia, and Europe. Their distribution patterns show that they precipitated from marine waters entering the continents from the Eurasian-Arctic basin, not from the Canadian-Arctic basin, which is separated from the former by the Proterozoic Lomonosov sill, and from the North Pacific by the 1,350-km-wide, Archean, Bering-Chukotsk shelf. Late Proterozoic through Devonian evaporites which precipitated from Arctic waters do not extend (except locally) west of the Rocky Mountains or east of the Chukotsk-Koryak Ranges. Marine connections between the high-latitude evaporite basins and those of the Tethys seas were minimal. After Devonian time, evaporite depocenters shifted systematically Atlanticward with the progressive formation of the Franz Josef and Faeroes-Greenland sills. High-latitude evaporite deposits are scarce after formation of the Faeroes-Greenland sill.

Thus the requisite temperature and salinity for late Proterozoic-Paleozoic evaporite deposition in high latitudes during evaporite-maximum periods can be attributed only to the existence, and persistence, of the Gulf Stream-North Atlantic Drift system since middle Proterozoic time. No proposed mechanism of continental drift or polar wandering accounts for the high-latitude evaporite-deposition pattern, or for the consistent and progressive Atlanticward shift of evaporite depocenters through time. Continental drift and polar wandering in the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean areas, if either ever took place, are pre-late Proterozoic events.

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