Pre-Cenozoic Tectonic Evolution of Northeast Siberia

Abstract

The pre-Cenozoic stratigraphic and tectonic history of the northeastern USSR can be explained in plate tectonic terms by the collision of the Siberia and North America plates with a Kolyma plate, now represented by the Kolyma and Omolon massifs, and with several other microplates. The margins of the plates were sites of continental accretion and ocean-floor subduction through the Paleozoic and Mesozoic culminating in collisions in the Late Cretaceous. The Novosibirsk plate, the area now occupied by the East Siberian Sea, may have collided with the Canadian Arctic margin of North America in the mid-Paleozoic and then rifted away, eventually colliding with Kolyma and Siberia.