NE Atlantic continental rifting and volcanic margin formation

Abstract

Abstract Deep seismic data from the Hatton-Rockall region, the mid-Norway margin and the SW Barents Sea provide images of the crustal structure that make it possible to estimate the relative amounts of crustal thinning for the Late Jurassic-Cretaceous and Maastrichtian-Paleocene NE Atlantic rift episodes. In addition, plate reconstructions illustrate the relative movements between Eurasia and Greenland back to Mid-Jurassic time. The NE Atlantic rift system developed as a result of a series of rift episodes from the Caledonian orogeny to early Tertiary time. The Late Palaeozoic rifting is poorly constrained, particularly with respect to timing. However, rifted basin geometries, inferred to be of this age, are observed at depth in seismic data on the flanks of the younger rift structures. Intra-continental rifting in Late Jurassic-Cretaceous times caused c. 50–70 km of crustal extension and subsequent Cretaceous basin subsidence from the Rockall Trough-North Sea areas in the south, to the SW Barents Sea in the north. In late Early to early Late Cretaceous times, new rifting occurred in the Rockall Trough and Labrador Sea associated with the northward propagation of North Atlantic sea-floor spreading. When sea-floor spreading was approached in the Labrador Sea the Rockall rift apparently became extinct. The final NE Atlantic rift episode was initiated near the Campanian-Maastrichtian boundary, lasted until continental separation near the Paleocene-Eocene transition, and caused c. 140 km extension. The late syn-rift and the earliest sea-floor spreading periods were affected by widespread igneous activity across a c. 300 km wide zone along the rifted plate boundary. The deep seismic data provide lower-crustal structural geometries that represent boundary conditions for a better mapping and understanding of the extensional thinning of the crust. The crustal geometries question extension estimates previously made from basin subsidence analysis, and aid in the definition of bodies of magmatic underplating beneath the outer volcanic margins.