Crustal Variations along the North East Greenland Margin and the Adjacent Basins

Wilfried Jokat, Tobias Hermann, and Stefanie Kessling
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar Research, Bremerhaven, Germany.

The NE-Greenland margin formed during several rift phases. First the Norwegian-Greenland Basin started to form some 55 Ma, followed by the younger Boreas and Molloy basins. In the Middle Oligocene, finally, the Jan Mayen microcontinent separated from East Greenland. Deep seismic data across the Boreas, the Greenland and the Scoresby basins indicate that the driving forces for the continental break-up have created crustal domains with massive crustal intrusions as well as massive subaerial basalt deposits underneath the continent and within the continent-ocean transition zone. Following standard models such a break-up might be driven by a large thermal anomaly/plume. If so, such a thermal event was not long-living off East Greenland. It did not influence the ultra-slow seafloor spreading system, which was installed just after break-up and created thin oceanic crust.
This and other recent observations on the crustal structure along the East Greenland margin will be presented and discussed concerning its implications for continental break-up models.

 

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90130©2011 3P Arctic, The Polar Petroleum Potential Conference & Exhibition, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 30 August-2 September, 2011.

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