Eurekan transpressive deformation in the Wandel Hav Mobile Belt (northeast Greenland)

Abstract

Besides the ∼W‐E trending Kap Cannon Thrust Zone and Harder Fjord Fault Zone, the 300 km long and NW‐SE striking Wandel Hav Mobile Belt represents the third major fault zone in north Greenland. Structural analyses in several areas of this belt suggest that compressive deformation is characterized by transpressive dextral strike‐slip kinematics. This is demonstrated by a combination of folding around ∼W‐E axes, approximately north and south directed reverse faulting, and dextral strike‐slip displacements along NW‐SE trending fault lines. The initial formation of the long, linear faults is interpreted to be related to deformational events in Late Paleozoic, Triassic‐Jurassic, and Late Cretaceous times. Due to the lack of structural evidence, we assume that deformations led to the generation of extension faults which probably were reactivated during dextral strike‐slip tectonism. It is suggested that dextral transpressive deformation was coeval with ∼N‐S compression at the Harder Fjord Fault Zone and Cap Cannon Thrust Zone and took place during Eocene (Eurekan) times. Dextral strike‐slip tectonism in the Wandel Hav Mobile Belt was the result of ∼N‐S compression due to a general northward movement of the Greenland plate. As a zone of crustal weakness, the belt can be interpreted as the onshore equivalent of the main transcurrent fault zone (De Geer Fault) which caused the intracontinental dextral slip of Svalbard (Barents Shelf) relative to north Greenland during Early Tertiary (Eurekan) times and prior to their separation. In this configuration, it represents one part of the belt of Eurekan deformation which extends from the Canadian Arctic islands over north Greenland to the Barents Shelf where compressive deformation is recorded in the West Spitsbergen Fold‐and‐Thrust Belt.