Circum-Arctic Lithosphere Evolution
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Samples from the Lomonosov Ridge place new constraints on the geological evolution of the Arctic Ocean
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Published:January 01, 2018
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CiteCitation
C. Knudsen, J. R. Hopper, P. R. Bierman, M. Bjerager, T. Funck, P. F. Green, J. R. Ineson, P. Japsen, C. Marcussen, S. C. Sherlock, T. B. Thomsen, 2018. "Samples from the Lomonosov Ridge place new constraints on the geological evolution of the Arctic Ocean", Circum-Arctic Lithosphere Evolution, V. Pease, B. Coakley
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Abstract
A number of rock samples were collected from two dredge positions on the Lomonosov Ridge at water depths of 2–3.5 km. The dredge samples are dominated by sediments deformed and metamorphosed under greenschist-facies conditions 470 myr ago according to 40Ar/39Ar dating of metamorphic muscovite. This shows that the Lomonosov Ridge was involved in a major Mid-Ordovician orogenic event that correlates with early arc–terrane accretion observed in northern Ellesmere Island, Svalbard, and other parts of the Caledonian belt. Detrital zircon age spectra of these metasediments span the Mesoproterozoic–Palaeoproterozoic with a main peak at around 1.6 Ga, and a pattern similar to that known from Caledonian metasedimentary rocks in East Greenland and northern Norway, as well as from Cambrian sediments in Estonia and Palaeozoic sediments on Novaya Zemlya. A second population of dredge samples comprises undeformed, non-metamorphic sandstones and siltstones. Detrital zircons in these sediments span the Palaeoproterozoic with a few Archaean zircons. Both rock types are covered by an up to 8 Ma ferromanganese crust and are evaluated to represent outcrop, and apatite fission-track data from three of the rock samples indicate that exposure at the seabed corresponds to a regional event of uplift and erosion that affected the Arctic in the Late Miocene. The data from the Lomonosov Ridge suggest that the 470 Ma orogenic event extended from Scotland and northern Scandinavia into the Arctic, including Svalbard, the Pearya Terrane and the Chukchi Borderlands.
Supplementary material: Detrital zircon age data and details of the thermal history constraints are available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3852151
- absolute age
- alkaline earth metals
- Ar/Ar
- Arctic Ocean
- Arctic region
- arkosic composition
- Be-10
- beryllium
- composition
- concentration
- cooling
- EDS spectra
- electron microscopy data
- fission-track dating
- geochronology
- isotopes
- Lomonosov Ridge
- low temperature
- metals
- metamorphic rocks
- metasedimentary rocks
- ocean basins
- Ordovician
- orogeny
- paleogeography
- Paleozoic
- petrography
- provenance
- radioactive isotopes
- relative age
- samples
- sediments
- SEM data
- spectra
- temperature
- thermal history
- U/Pb
- X-ray spectra