Abstract We present a consistent synthesis of palaeothermal (apatite fission track analysis (AFTA) and vitrinite reflectance) data from UK Southern North Sea wells with the regional pattern of exhumation defined from sonic velocity data. Cenozoic exhumation across most of the region began in the Paleocene between 63 and 59 Ma. Amounts of removed section are around 1 km across the offshore platform, increasing to 2 km or more on the Sole Pit axis. Neogene exhumation within this area began between 22 and 15 Ma, and led to removal of up to 1 km of section. Along the eastern flank of the Sole Pit axis, sonic data define a pre-Chalk event, and AFTA data from these wells show that exhumation began between 120 and 93 Ma. This timing correlates with events defined from AFTA data in the Sorgenfrei–Tornquist Zone, further east, presumably reflecting a response to regional tectonic stresses. East of the Sole Pit axis, AFTA and sonic velocities suggest that Neogene exhumation dominates, while further east towards the central parts of the North Sea Mesozoic sediments appear to be at maximum burial today except for local effects related to salt movement. The multiple episodes of exhumation and burial defined here have important implications for exploration.

Abstract Basin modelling and compaction studies based on sonic data from the Mesozoic succession in 68 Danish wells were used to estimate the amount of section missing due to late Cenozoic erosion. The missing section increases gradually towards the coasts of Norway and Sweden from zero in the North Sea to c. 500 m in most of the Danish Basin, but over a narrow zone it reaches c. 1000 m on the Skagerrak-Kattegat Platform in northernmost Denmark. The increasing amount of erosion matches the increase in the hiatus at the base of the Quaternary, where Neogene and older strata are truncated, and the Mesozoic succession is thus found to have been more deeply buried by c. 500 Paleocene-Miocene sediments in large parts of the area. These observations suggest that the onset of erosion occurred during the Neogene, and that the Skagerrak-Kattegat Platform was affected by tectonic movements prior to glacial erosion. In southern Sweden just east of the Kattegat, the exposed basement of the South Swedish Dome attains altitudes of almost 400 m. The formation of the Dome started in the Late Palaeozoic, but geomorphological investigations have led to the conclusion that a rise of the Dome occurred during the Cenozoic. We find that the pattern of late Cenozoic erosion in Denmark agrees with a Neogene uplift of the South Swedish Dome and of the Southern Scandes in Norway. This suggestion is consistent with major shifts in sediment transport directions during the late Cenozoic observed in the eastern North Sea, and with formation of a new erosion surface as well as re-exposure of sub-Cambrian and sub-Cretaceous surfaces in southern Sweden. The Neogene uplift and erosion of southern Scandinavia appears to have been initiated in two phases, an early phase of ?Miocene age and a better-constrained later phase that began in the Pliocene. Neogene uplift of the South Swedish Dome with adjoining areas in Denmark fits into a pattern of late Cenozoic vertical movements around the North Atlantic.