Report on investigations of Tertiary sediments at Kap Brewster, Scoresby Sund, East Greenland

Abstract

Sediments associated with Tertiary basalts were suspected to occur at Kap Brewster, Scoresby Sund, since W. Scoresby's expedition brought back pieces of charcoal, and O. Nordenskjold and P. Koch found there numerous fossil tree trunks lying loose in basalt scree (Mathiesen, 1932). The sediments, with a marine fauna partly comparable with those known already from Kap Dalton (Ravn, 1933), were located at Kap Brewster by D. Mackeney and F.W. Sherrell, members of Lauge Koch's expedition in 1951. Hassan (1953) described the fossils colIected by them and gave a fairly detailed description of the geology of the area based on their field report. In ascending order he distinguished: (A) the infra-basalt sediments (age unknown), (B) the plateau basalts (Tertiary, with sediment intercalations), (C) the Kap Dalton 'series' (subdivided into the 'Cyrena beds' - Middle-Upper Eocene, and the 'Coeloma beds' - probably Lower Oligoeene), and (D) the Kap Brewster 'series' ('Chiamys beds' - probably Miocene). The relationships between these units were not determined. This was, therefore, the aim of the present author's visit in 1971 within the mapping programme of the Geological Survey of Greenland. B. Buchardt Larsen assisted the author in the fieid, and his help is acknowledged here with pleasure.