Abstract
The onset of the Quaternary (2.58 Ma) corresponds to significant paleo-environmental events, such as the intensification and southward extension of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. In the North Sea Basin a significant late Cenozoic succession has been identified as a high-resolution archive of paleo-environmental changes during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. However, the identification of the base of the Quaternary has been a long-standing issue owing to lack of stratigraphic calibration. This study incorporates continuous, regional 3D seismic data with high-quality chronostratigraphic markers to map the base-Quaternary surface at high resolution across the entire North Sea. Depth conversion, backstripping, seismic geomorphology and sedimentation rate calculations are integrated to analyse the paleogeographical evolution of the North Sea Basin and its infill of c . 83 × 10 3 km 3 of northward prograding marine to deltaic sediments. The basin is 600 km long from SSE to NNW and largely localized above residual topography of the Mesozoic graben system. During the earliest Quaternary (2.58 – 2.35 Ma) paleo-water depths were c. 300 ± 50 m and solid sedimentation rates (calculated from 0% porosity) c. 32 km 3 ka −1 . The base-Quaternary provides an important marker for further studies of the changing environment of the Quaternary of NW Europe as well as resource and shallow geohazard analysis. Supplementary material: A base Quaternary two-way travel time structure map is available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3900343
Highlights
The onset of the Quaternary (2.58 Ma) corresponds to significant paleo-environmental events, such as the intensification and southward extension of Northern Hemisphere glaciation
The primary reasons for the asymmetry in subcrop age relate to the regional structural controls of the underlying central graben and the eastern North Sea Basin offering greater accommodation to sediments supplied from around the basin and the relative sediment inputs through time between southern Norway, the Scottish mainland and NW Europe. These factors gave rise to the clockwise arrangement of clinoform breakpoints through the Cenozoic (e.g. Huuse et al 2001), which set up the template on which the base Quaternary formed, with the southeastern part being a conformable continuation of the Neogene progradation from the Baltic region whereas the western and northern parts are characterized by greater hiati owing to erosion and onlap
The surface defines a highly elongate Quaternary depocentre comprising some 83 × 103 km3 of sediments deposited in an elongated semienclosed deep marine basin with paleowater depths throughout the early Quaternary of up to 300 ± 50 m
Summary
The onset of the Quaternary (2.58 Ma) corresponds to significant paleo-environmental events, such as the intensification and southward extension of Northern Hemisphere glaciation. In the North Sea Basin a significant late Cenozoic succession has been identified as a high-resolution archive of paleo-environmental changes during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. The identification of the base of the Quaternary has been a long-standing issue owing to lack of stratigraphic calibration. This study incorporates continuous, regional 3D seismic data with high-quality chronostratigraphic markers to map the base-Quaternary surface at high resolution across the entire North Sea. Depth conversion, backstripping, seismic geomorphology and sedimentation rate calculations are integrated to analyse the paleogeographical evolution of the North Sea Basin and its infill of c. The base-Quaternary provides an important marker for further studies of the changing environment of the Quaternary of NW Europe as well as resource and shallow geohazard analysis
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