The myth of the De Geer Zone

Abstract

Background Cenozoic rifting in the Arctic and the resulting opening of the Labrador Sea and the Fram Strait are typically associated with the movement of the Svalbard Archipelago c. 400 km southwards and its separation from Greenland. Thus far, most of this tectonic displacement was ascribed to lateral movement along the N–S-striking De Geer Zone, a thousand-kilometer-long paleo-transform fault believed to extend from northwestern Norway to northern Greenland. Methods The study presents a new interpretation of tectonic structures on seismic reflection data north and west of Svalbard. Results The present study reports the presence of two km-thick, hundreds of kilometers long, E–W- to WNW–ESE-striking shear zones, northwest and west of the island of Spitsbergen, Svalbard, in the Norwegian Arctic. Contractional structures within the shear zones, their strike, the inferred transport direction, and the great depth at which they are found indicate that they formed during the Timanian Orogeny in the late Neoproterozoic (c. 650–550 Ma). These structures extend at least 80–90 km west of the coastline of Spitsbergen. The presence of continuous, late Neoproterozoic Timanian thrusts this far west of Spitsbergen invalidates the occurrence of c. 400 km lateral movements along the N–S-striking De Geer Zone along the western Barents Sea–Svalbard margin in the Cenozoic. Conclusions The present results suggest that the De Geer Zone does not exist and that related fault complexes (e.g., Hornsund Fault Complex) did not accommodate any strike-slip movement. In addition, the formation of major NW–SE-striking transform faults in the Fram Strait was controlled by Timanian thrust systems. The present results call for major revisions of all current plate tectonics models for the opening of the Fram Strait and Arctic tectonics in the Cenozoic and for critical reviews of major fault zones inferred from indirect observations.