A Kinematic Model for the Phanerozoic Deformed Belts of Northeastern Ellesmere Island, Arctic Canada

By

C. Harrison, K. Dewing, U. Mayr (Geological Survey of Canada), K. Piepjohn (University of Munster, Germany), and F. Tessensohn (BGR, Germany)

Cooperative research (1998–2000) involving the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) and the Bundesanstalt fur Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe (BGR, Germany) will result in five new bedrock geology maps (1:125,000 scale) of northeastern Ellesmere Island and a revised understanding of Devonian-Carboniferous, and superimposed Paleogene, deformation styles.

Major tectonic features include:

1) faulted Paleoproterozoic gneissic-granitoid basement to the south, locally elevated to 2300 m;

2) a narrow and lower relief belt of steep faults and gently inclined lower Paleozoic craton cover that extends under

3) an arcuate, southerly- to southeasterly-transported, foreland thrust belt involving Ordovician to Devonian shelf strata, and Paleocene orogen-derived conglomerate;

4) a similarly arcuate front range belt of en echelon thrusts carrying farther-travelled Neoproterozoic(?)-Devonian strata;

5) a high relief (to 2000 m) main range fold belt of cleaved Neoproterozoic(?)-Cambrian outer shelf strata, and

6) an interior plateau featuring cleaved and tightly folded lower Paleozoic basinal deposits.

The main range belt terminates along strike to the northeast in a braided sinistral fault array that is parallel to nearby Nares Strait. A kinematic model is proposed in which displacement on sinistral faults is linked southwestwards to front range and foreland restraining bend thrusts. Early formed folds and thrusts within the sinistral fault array have been rotated counterclockwise during progressive northerly directed indentation of the ancestral Greenland plate in the Late Paleocene and Eocene. While involvement of basement in strike slip deformation is not discounted, neither is such involvement required to account for the major features of the fold and thrust belt.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90008©2002 AAPG Pacific Section/SPE Western Region Joint Conference of Geoscientists and Petroleum Engineers, Anchorage, Alaska, May 18–23, 2002.