Deformational History of the Chukchi Sea Area (Synthesis from Onshore and Offshore Data)

Mikhail Antipov¹, Grigoriy Bondarenko¹, and Eduard Shipilov^2
1Geological Institute Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
²Murmansk Marine and Biological Institute Russian Academy of Sciences, Murmansk, Russia.

Chukchi sea region includes two folded continental margins - Chukotka and Arctic Alaska which separated by oceanic crust of Canada basin.
Oldest Paleozoic deformational event in region is Devonian Elsmirian orogeny that produced by Yapetus paleo ocean closure.

Late Jurassic extension event related with start of Canada basin opening, and separating from Arctic Canada the crustal block of Chukotka - Arctic Alaska.

The main Mesozoic tectonic event took place in Early Cretaceous, and was related with closure of South Anyui - Angayucham oceanic basin, and collision of East Eurasia - North America margins and Arctic Alaska - Chukotka microcontinent.

The post collisional orogenic collapse took place in middle Cretaceous, and started up the modern North-Chukchi - Colville sedimentation activity.

This scenario of main tectonic deformational events step by step reconstructs modern structure of basins and uplifts at Chukchi sea region. One of main consequence from this model is presents of low-deformed Paleozoic sedimentary units beneath North Chukchi sedimentary basin. This thesis is well correlated with onshore geology data.

This point of view permits propose new concept of oil and gas generic potential of Paleozoic and lower Mesozoic source rock in North Chukchi and Colville basins.

Geological data collected by research team of Prof. S. Sokolov (GIN RAS, Moscow).

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90096©2009 AAPG 3-P Arctic Conference and Exhibition, Moscow, Russia