MESOZOIC DENUDATION HISTORY OF NE GREENLAND AND THE LINK TO SEDIMENTS ON THE CONJUGATE NORWEGIAN MARGIN

The margin of East Greenland has attracted considerable attention recently, both as an onshore analogue for the evolution of the offshore basins west of Shetlands and mid-Norway, and as a potential source of clastic sediments to the more distal sections of these basins. Prior to separation of Greenland from Norway/Shetlands in the late Thanetian - early Ypresian (57-55 Ma) three of the most important hydrocarbon frontier regions in the NE Atlantic, the Vøring, Møre, and Faroes-Shetland Basins, were adjacent to the Greenland continental margin between latitudes 66° and 75°N. However, the provenance of the Phanerozoic strata in these basins has generally been assumed to be the Norwegian-UK margin, and therefor the distribution of reservoir quality sands in the currently distal parts of these basins must have been controlled by inter or intra-basinal highs.

More recently this view has been challenged by the recognition of sediments in the Vøring Basin with East Greenland affinities. The present work is directed at deriving high resolution denudation chronologies for east Greenland and an improved understanding of the structural controls on sediment flux from drainage to sedimentary basins.

Denudation chronologies are obtained by adopting a new method for extracting temperature history information from apatite fission track data. These, and the recognition of relay structures linking the major rift bounding faults and their inferred role as sediment conduits, highlight both the contribution this margin made to the pre-breakup sedimentary infill of the Vøring Basin, and the influence that denudational and structural controls have on the preserved stratal record.

This contribution resolves the detail of the post-Late Jurassic erosion of East Greenland (72°–75°N). The results are integrated with the record of Mesozoic and Tertiary sedimentation to provide a detailed picture of onshore erosion and offshore deposition of the North Atlantic margins during this time interval.