A Sub-Crustal Piercing Point for North Atlantic Reconstructions

Randell Stephenson

Receiver functions from a SW-NE directed passive seismological broadband array through Ella Ø in the Central Fjord area of East Greenland established by the University of Aarhus with funding from the Danish Natural Science Research Council have revealed an upper mantle structure dipping to the east. The seismic characteristics of this surface, its dip direction and angle and its tectonic setting within the western hinterland of the Caledonian Orogen are similar to those of the well-known sub-crustal Flannan Reflector discovered by deep seismic reflection surveying carried out in the 1980s by the British Institutions Reflection Profiling Syndicate (BIRPS) offshore north-western Scotland. The similarities are such that a correlation between these two continental lithosphere structures is strongly suggested. In this presentation we explore the hypothesis that the Ella Ø and Flannan seismic signatures originate from the same structure in the pre-north Atlantic rifting continental lithosphere. In particular, there are implications for (1) plate reconstructions of this part of the North Atlantic and its conjugate margins, possibly including the nature and role of the Jan Mayen continental block and (2) rift processes in the North Atlantic given the preservation of ancestral mantle lithosphere structure proximal to the rift zone and its associated magmatism.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90177©3P Arctic, Polar Petroleum Potential Conference & Exhibition, Stavanger, Norway, October 15-18, 2013