Cenozoic history of the Bering Sea and its northwestern margin

Abstract

Tectonic reconstructions based on the geodynamic analysis of geologic, paleomagnetic, structural and kinematic data of Cenozoic age from the western Bering Sea region are proposed in the present paper. The most active tectonic and magmatic processes took place in the Komandorsky segment of the Bering Sea, exemplified by the Late Cretaceous–Early Eocene Olutorsky Arc and Eocene–Oligocene Govena–Karaginsky Arc, which was built on the structures of the Olutorsky Arc. A model of the complex collision of these two arcs with the paleocontinental margin, which considers rotations of the geological blocks from the various structural zones of the western margin of the Bering Sea in the horizontal plane (paleomagnetic data), was proposed by the authors. According to this model the collision of the flanks of the Olutorsky and Govena–Karaginsky arcs took place in the Eocene, before the collision of the central parts in the Miocene.