The age and mode of formation of the various sub-basins of the Amerasian Basin of the Arctic Ocean remain unknown. Jurassic-Cretaceous synorogenic foreland basin deposits are the youngest stratigraphic units deposited in the Russian Arctic prior to rifting and formation of the Amerasian Basin. U-Pb dating of detrital zircon suites (6 samples, ∼100 zircons each) by LA-ICP-MS reveal that sandstones in the New Siberian Islands have nearly identical sources to those in Chukotka and the South Anyui Zone (SAZ) despite evidence for proximal derivation and little transport. These include abundant Precambrian (∼2.1-1.7 Ga), Late Paleozoic (∼330-250 Ma) and lesser Mesozoic (∼175 to 145 Ma) ages; youngest zircons are likely derived from Main Belt granites in the N. Verkoyansk. The foreland basin and its counterpart the orogenic highlands either extended continuously for ∼1400 km along strike, or the localities studied were once much closer together. We hypothesize that rifting/extension associated with formation of the Makarov Basin and development of the SAZ as a transform fault might be one way of explaining the present separation of the study sites.
|Original language||English (US)|
|Number of pages||26|
|Journal||Norsk Geologisk Tidsskrift|
|State||Published - Dec 1 2008|
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