A tectonostratigraphic framework for the late Mesoproterozoic Bylot basins of Laurentia

Abstract

The Bylot basins of northeastern Canada and northwestern Greenland comprise the Borden, Aston-Hunting, Fury and Hecla, and Thule basins. This system of late Mesoproterozoic ( c. 1.27–1.0 Ga) sedimentary basins preserves an important record of present day northeastern Laurentia coincident with the emplacement of the Mackenzie large igneous province, the Shawinigan and Ottawan phases of the Grenville Orogeny, and the development of the Midcontinent Rift. However, establishing correlations between the sedimentary successions of the Bylot basins has been hindered by the absence of robust chronostratigraphic constraints. As a result, the degree to which these basins were interconnected, whether they share a common tectonostratigraphic history, and how their sedimentary patterns relate to regional tectonic events remain open questions. Recent Re–Os geochronology from organic-rich strata has yielded depositional ages from the Borden (1048 and 1046 Ma) and Fury and Hecla (1087 Ma) basins, which we integrate with existing models for the depositional history of these basins to derive three tectonostratigraphic assemblages from the Bylot basins. We project our refined tectonostratigraphic framework for the Borden and Fury and Hecla successions to Greenland to establish a testable hypothesis for how the Thule Supergroup fits into this tectonostratigraphic picture.