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Knowledge of the relative motion of the North American and Eurasian plates during the late Mesozoic and Cenozoic provide insight into the observed timing and style of deformational events in the Bering Sea region. Periods of strong convergence between the North American and Eurasian plates (approximately 70-50 Ma, Maestrichtian to Paleocene) are correlated with compressional deformation between the Chukotsk Peninsula and northern Alaska and the initiation of development and movement along the Denali fault. The convergence also may be the cause of a previously proposed counterclockwise rotation of the Alaska Peninsula. Transform motion between these plates (approximately 50-37 Ma, middle to upper Eocene) correlates with subsidence of the Bering shelf and creation of a series of pull-ap rt basins (Anadyr, Amak, Bristol Bay, Navarin, Pribilof, and St. George) along the Bering margin. Slight compressive convergence from 37 Ma to present may be responsible for the anticlinal deformation of basin-filling sediments in the Anadyr and Khatyrka basins reported by McLean. A correlation between the velocities with which the two plates moved away from each other in the North Atlantic and the geometry of interaction in the Bering Sea region can be seen for most of the Tertiary.

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