Mesozoic and Cenozoic history of the Wandel Sea Basin area, North Greenland

Abstract

Mesozoic deposition in North Greenland is characterised largely by increasing complexity in the configuration of sub-basins developed in response to the major tectonic events in the Wandel Hav Strike-Slip Mobile Belt. While erosional remnants of Lower and Middle Triassic marine deposits are now confined to a very restricted area, Upper Jurassic - Lowcr Cretaceous marine to terrestrial deposition took place in two distinct sub-basins resulting from Jurassic left-lateral displacement in the Ingeborg Event. Variable marine and terrestrial Upper Cretaccous strata are restricted to local pull-apart basins formed in the right-lateral mid-Cretaceous Kilen Event; deposition in these basins was everywhere terminated in the continuously right-lateral transpressional movements of the Kronprins Christian Land Orogeny. Compression ceased around the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, and a post-orogenic terrestrial sequence of probable Paleocene age is disturbed only by extensional structures.