Preliminary report of fission track studies in the Jameson Land basin, East Greenland

Abstract

Fission track (FT) analysis is especially suited to reveal and date low temperature events. The closure temperature of apatite (100 ± 30°C) and its annealing characteristics in the interval of 70-125°C are especially relevant to the study of the maturation of hydrocarbons (Gleadow et al., 1983). FT analyses were made on Permian to Cretaceous, quartzose sandstones and arkoses from the Jameson Land basin. Both FT ages and track length distributions for apatites were obtained for samples taken along the western and eastern margin of the basin (fig. land Table 1) in order to sttidy the tectonic and thermal history of the area. The investigation takes advantage of earlier FT work in the neighbouring Caledonian mountain belt which is believed to be the source of the terrigenous material, including the apatites, which make up the sediments (Hansen, 1985). A report of further Investigations in this area is in preparation.