Magnetic signature of North-East Greenland, the Morris Jesup Rise, the Yermak Plateau, the central Fram Strait: Constraints for the rift/drift history between Greenland and Svalbard since the Eocene

Abstract

A compilation of several aeromagnetic surveys across North Greenland and the Fram Strait area is presented. Across North Greenland, the data are related to the known onshore geology. The correlation between the geological structure and the large-scale magnetic anomalies is excellent. Along the North Greenland coast, the data indicate that the Late Mesozoic Kap Washington volcanics might have a larger areal extent than known from onshore geological mapping. The submarine Morris Jesup Rise is characterized by strong positive magnetic anomalies, and the anomalies across the plateau indicate the presence of distinct volcanic centers. This massive magmatism has occurred latest in conjunction with the Oligocene initial stages of plate divergence between Svalbard and North Greenland that led to the development of Fram Strait. Both plateaux, the Morris Jesup Rise and the Yermak Plateau, are interpreted to be of continental origin and, in the initial rift stage of the Eurasia Basin around 56Ma, to have been contiguous with the Lomonosov Ridge. More toward the east in the Fram Strait interpretations of seismic and bathymetric data indicate the presence of an active segment of mid-ocean ridge, the Lena Trough. This approximately 280-km-long segment terminates in the south at the NW–SE striking Spitsbergen Fracture Zone, while in the north it bends to connect with the Gakkel Ridge. A shallow water pathway along the line of the trough might have existed between those times and ~21Ma, above the propagating rift system in the north and, further south, over extending and subsiding continental crust of the Svalbard and North-East Greenland margins. Magnetic anomaly identifications indicate that the Lena Trough has remained an ultraslow spreading system, or possibly even all of the magnetic lineations may be signals of serpentinized exhumed mantle rocks rather than of basaltic crust.