Geological Structure and History of Eastern Russian Arctic (Laptev-Chukchi region)

Anatoly Nikishin

There are many sedimentary basins within Laptev, East-Siberian and Chukchi seas shelf region. We can recognize Ust’-Lena, Anisin and New-Siberian rifted basins in the Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, Dremkhedskiy, and Pestsovyi rifted basins in the East Siberian Sea, and North Chukchi Basin and South Chukchi Basin in the Chukchi Sea. Pre-Aptian regional collisional tectonics took place in this region. This why we think a regional rifting took place not before the Aptian. Possible regional rift event was during Aptian-Albian times simultaneously in the all this area. Regional compression tectonics affected Chukchi Sea and East-Siberian Sea region at the Cretaceous/Paleocene transition. This was a main epoch of Wrangel-Herald thrust belt origin and inversion structure formation in the North-Chukchi Basin and Dremkhedsky Basin. New regional rift event took place during Eocene times. Transpression tectonics affected South Chukchi Sea and North Chukchi Sea basins during Oligocene to Neogene. We discuss a history of rifted basins in the Eastern Russian Arctic Shelf in connection with history of Arctic Oceanic Basin and orogenic belts in the Asia and North America

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