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Cambro-Ordovician strata in Ny Friesland, Spitsbergen and their palaeotectonic significance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

K. Swett
K. Swett
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa 52242, U.S.A.
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Abstract

Summary

Field and petrologic investigations of Cambro-Ordovician strata in Ny Friesland, Spitsbergen reveal a stratigraphic, sedimentologic, and diagenetic history for those rocks that bear striking similarities to coeval strata in central East Greenland, northwest Scotland and western Newfoundland. Parallels between these presently widely separated areas include: stratigraphic sequence (including enigmatic gaps), sedimentary structures, faunal assemblages, trace fossils, geochemical anomalies, and diagenetic sequences. It seems inescapable that the Cambro-Ordovician successions in Ny Friesland, central East Greenland, northwest Scotland, and western Newfoundland were developed on a once contiguous shelf on the margin of the lapetus Ocean. A tentative sequential tectono-sedimentological facies model of the ‘North Atlantic Geosyncline’ extending in time from late Proterozoic to the opening of the Atlantic Ocean is proposed to explain the empirical data. Slow closure of the lapetus basin, simultaneously involving transgression of the ‘North American’ plate and subduction of lapetus oceanic crust beneath a Euro-Balto-Scandinavian plate, followed by collision of the two continental plates, in turn followed by reopening along the approximate collision boundary appears to explain the observed relationships. This palaeotectonic/sedimentologic model is subject to further testing. The lithostratigraphic scheme is further refined.

Type
Articles
Information
Geological Magazine , Volume 118 , Issue 3 , May 1981 , pp. 225 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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