977-1005－Neogene stratigraphy and the sedimentary and oceanographic development of the NW European Atlantic margin.pdf

Marine and Petroleum Geology 22 (2005) 977–1005
ate/marpetgeo
Neogene stratigraphy and the sedimentary and oceanographic
development of the NW European Atlantic margin
Martyn S. Stokera,*, Daniel Praegb, Berit Oline Hjelstuenc,
Jan Sverre Labergd, Tove Nielsene, Pat M. Shannonb
aBritish Geological Survey, Murchison House, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3LA, UK
bUCD School of Geological Sciences, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland
cDepartment of Earth Science, University of Bergen, Alle`gt 41, N-5007 Bergen, Norway
dDepartment of Geology, University of Tromsø, N-9037 Tromsø, Norway
eGeological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, DK-1350, Copenhagen K, Denmark
Received 12 May 2004; received in revised form 27 September 2004; accepted 8 November 2004
Abstract
A regional correlation of Neogene stratigraphy has been attempted along and across the NW European Atlantic continental margin,
between Mid-Norway and SW Ireland. Two unconformity-bounded essions are recognised. These are referred to as the lower and upper
Neogene essions, and have been dated as Miocene–early Pliocene and early Pliocene–Holocene, respectively, in age. Their development
is interpreted to reflect plate-wide, tectonically driven changes in the sedimentary, oceanographic and latterly climatic evolution of the NE
Atlantic region. The lower Neogene ession mainly preserves a record of deep-water sedimentation that indicates an expansion of
contourite sediment drifts above submarine unconformities, within this ession, on both sides of the eastern Greenland–Scotland Ridge
from the mid-Miocene. This is interpreted to record enhanced deep-water exchange through the Faroe Conduit (deepest part of the Southern
Gateway), and can be linked pressive inversion of the Wyville–Thomson plex. Thus, a pervasive, interconnected Arctic–
North Atlantic deep-water circulation system is a Neogene phenomenon. The upper Neogene ession records a regional change, at about
4 Ma, i