Tectonics of the eastern Arctic region

Abstract

The Vendian (Baikalian), Late Devonian (Ellesmerian), and Mid-Cretaceous (Brookian) orogenies were three cardinal events in the history of formation and transformation of the continental crust in the eastern Arctic region. The epi-Baikalian Hyperborean Craton was formed by the end of the Vendian (660–550 Ma), when the Archean-Proterozoic Hyperborean continental block was built up by the Baikalian orogenic belt and concomitant collision granitoids. As judged from the localization of deepwater facies, the Early Paleozoic ocean occupied the western part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, western Alaska, and the southern framework of the Canada and Podvodnikov basins and was connected with the Iapetus ocean. The closure of the Early Paleozoic Arctic basins is recorded in two surfaces of structural unconformities corresponding to the pre-Middle Devonian Scandian orogenic phase and the Late Devonian Ellesmerian Orogeny; each tectonic phase was accompanied by dislocations and metamorphism. The Ellesmerian collision was crucial in the Caledonian tectogenesis. The widespread Late Devonian-Mississippian rifting probably was a reflection of postorogenic relaxation. As a result, the vast epi-Caledonian continental plate named Euramerica, or Laurussia, was formed at the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary. The East Arctic segment of this plate is considered in this paper. In the Devonian, the Angayucham ocean, which was connected with the Paleoasian and Uralian oceans [62], separated this plate from the Siberian continent. The South Anyui Basin most likely was a part of this Paleozoic oceanic space. The shelf sedimentation on the epi-Caledonian plate in the Carboniferous and Permian was followed by subsidence and initial rifting in the Triassic and Jurassic, which further gave way to the late Neocomian-early Albian spreading in the Canada Basin that detached the Chukchi Peninsula-Alaska microplate from the continental plate [25]. The collision of this microplate with the Siberian continent led to the closure of the South Anyui-Angayucham ocean and the development of the Mid-Cretaceous New Siberian-Chukchi-Brooks Orogenic System that comprised the back Chukchi Zone as a hinterland and the frontal New Siberian-Wrangel-Herald-Lisburne-Brooks Thrust Zone as a foreland; the basins coeval with thrusting adjoined the foreland. Collision started in the Late Jurassic; however, the peak of the orogenic stage fell on the interval 125–112 Ma, when ophiolites had been obducted on the margin of the Chukchi Peninsula-Alaska microplate along with folding and thrusting accompanied by an increase in the crust’s thickness, amphibolite-facies metamorphism, and growth of granite-gneiss domes. The magmatic diapir of the De Long Arch that grew within the continental plate in the Mid-Cretaceous reflected a global pulse of the lower mantle upwelling that coincided with the maximum opening of the Canada Basin. The present-day appearance of the eastern Arctic region arose in the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic owing to the opening of the Amerasia and Eurasia oceans. Sedimentary basins of various ages and origins—including the Late Devonian-Early Carboniferous grabens, the spatially coinciding Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous rifts related to the opening of the Canada Basin, the syncollision basins in front of the growing orogen, and the Cretaceous-Cenozoic basins coeval with strike-slip faulting and rifting at the final stages of orogenic compression and during the opening of the Eurasia ocean were telescoped on sea shelves.