Late Tectonic History of Beaufort Sea-North Pacific Area: ABSTRACT

Abstract

The Kaltag fault (and its northern associated splay, the Rapid fault array) is the sheared suture between the Eurasian-Alaskan plate and the North American plate in the area between the Mackenzie Delta and the Alaskan Border. This condition has been maintained throughout considerable additional phases of faulting and folding from mid-Cretaceous to the present. Previously, the Alaskan plate had been the northwestern nose of the North American plate. The interplate suture was deflected to the north as the Canadian Shield was approached. The Kaltag fault continued northeastward 2,000 km seaward of the Sverdrup rim, northwest of the Canadian Arctic Islands, and north of Greenland. The driving force was directed from the southwest by the Eurasian plate after its collision in E rly Cretaceous (Hauterivian) with the North American plate and the docking of north-moving exotic terranes from the Pacific. During the early Tertiary, perhaps in concert with the accretion of the Okhotsk block to the Asian plate north of Japan, the northern Pacific subduction zone jumped southward to the Aleutian Arc where it has persisted until today. A distance of 800 km separates the stable shelf of the Canadian craton, at the Alberta Foothills thrust belt, from the subduction zone off Vancouver Island. The foreland thrust belt and the accretion of exotic terranes in Mesozoic and Tertiary times extended the continental crust of the North American plate westward to the present active transform margin with the Pacific plate along the Queen Charlotte fault zone. End_of_Article - Last_Page 287------------