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The AAPG/Datapages Combined Publications Database

CSPG Special Publications

Abstract


Arctic Geology and Geophysics: Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Arctic Geology — Memoir 8, 1982
Pages 309-330

The Lower Paleozoic of Greenland

John S. Peel

Abstract

The lower Paleozoic in Greenland is most fully represented in northern Greenland where extensive outcrops of platform and deep-water sediments represent the continuation of the Arctic Platform and Franklinian Trough of adjacent Ellesmere Island. The Cambrian platform sequence attains a thickness of 1.5 km and includes, in addition to the Lower and Middle Cambrian, a thick Upper Cambrian (Dresbachian, Franconian, Trempealeauan) record. Ordovician platform deposits (1 km) include evaporites equivalent to the Baumann Fiord and Bay Fiord formations of Arctic Canada. In the Silurian, a complex of carbonate mounds developed in a variety of environmental situations near the junction between the platform to the south, and the Franklinian Trough to the north. The latter contains a mainly clastic sequence at least 7.5 km thick of probable Late Proterozoic-latest Silurian age, and now forms the locus of the North Greenland fold belt.

About 4 km of Cambrian and Ordovician platform sediments occur within the Caledonian fold belt in East Greenland, but Silurian deposits are also affected by this orogenesis in the northern part of the fold belt in northern Greenland. Traces of Ordovician platform deposits demonstrate a former lower Paleozoic cover to the Precambrian Shield in West Greenland.


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