Palaeobathymetric reconstruction on a gridded database: the northern North Atlantic and southern Greenland-Iceland-Norwegian sea

Abstract

Abstract A computer program combining backstripping with plate tectonics has been used to reconstruct the palaeobathymetry of the region between the Charlie Gibbs and Jan Mayen Fracture Zones from the East Greenland margin to the European shelf for the past 50 Ma. Two different models were tested, one assuming that continental extension and rifting opened the Rockall Trough and Faeroe-Shetland Channel during the Cretaceous and that the area has subsided ever since. The second model assumes that the Rockall-Faeroe region rifted in the Cretaceous and was uniformly uplifted in the late Palaeocene due to heating of the lithosphere by the mantle plume of the Iceland Hotspot. The alternative assumptions about the thermal age of the lithosphere produce very different results with implications for the palaeoceanography and sedimentation in the region. The isostatic model presented here predicts crustal thicknesses along the Iceland-Faeroe Ridge and in the Rockall-Faeroe region that are in close agreement with estimates using seismic and gravity techniques.