Abstract
The historical ‘de Geer Line’ between Svalbard and Greenland is shown to have had a Mesozoic precursor now residing well within the continental Greenland plate, where it coincides with the Wandel Hav Strike-Slip Mobile Belt. Well-constrained phases in relative plate motion reflected in the mobile belt are discernible back to the mid Jurassic, with more obscure phases dating even further back. There is evidence that the Wandel Hav Strike-Slip Mobile Belt may have been formed already in Late Palaeozoic time during onset of Pangean break-up; evidence for strike-slip movements of this age is, however, largely circumstantial, due to severe overprinting during the later phases. Wrench tectonics along the ‘fossil’ plate boundary culminated around the Cretaceous – Palaeogene boundary in the major right-lateral, transpressional Kronprins Christian Land Orogeny. Thus, the Wandel Hav Strike-Slip Mobile Belt may constitute the geological/structural expression of the Mesozoic Laurentian – Eurasian plate boundary all the way up to initiation of actual seafloor spreading at chron 24 in Palaeogene time.
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