The hypothesis of a km-thick ice shelf covering the entire Arctic Ocean during peak glacial conditions was proposed nearly half a century ago. Floating ice shelves preserve few direct traces after their disappearance, making reconstructions difficult. Seafloor imprints of ice shelves should, however, exist where ice grounded along their flow paths. Here we present new evidence of ice-shelf groundings on bathymetric highs in the central Arctic Ocean, resurrecting the concept of an ice shelf extending over the entire central Arctic Ocean during at least one previous ice age. New and previously mapped glacial landforms together reveal flow of a spatially coherent, in some regions >1-km thick, central Arctic Ocean ice shelf dated to marine isotope stage 6 (∼140 ka). Bathymetric highs were likely critical in the ice-shelf development by acting as pinning points where stabilizing ice rises formed, thereby providing sufficient back stress to allow ice shelf thickening.
The well-preserved Tvären crater is noteworthy for being one of a small number of Early and Middle Ordovician impact structures formed in a marine environment. It is demonstrated to be an impact structure by the presence of a breccia lens, consisting of crystalline basement rocks, and shocked quartz. The breccia lens formed under dry-hot conditions after expulsion of sea-water by the impact. Resurging sea-water thereupon deposited a positively graded, 60 m thick turbidite-like unit. This graded resurge deposit is a previously unknown feature, to be expected in open-sea impacts. Breccia in the lower part of this graded deposit contains fragments of a remarkably complete orthoceratite limestone succession that existed at the site of impact, resting on non-lithified sand of probably Early to earliest Middle Cambrian age. A sedimentary succession was deposited inside the crater at depths decreasing from more than 200 m in the initial stages to some 100 m at the time of deposition of the youngest preserved beds. The environment within the crater thus favoured deposition of an essentially complete stratigraphic succession with depth-controlled palaeoecology for a significant time interval after the impact. Whereas planktonic members, like graptolites and chitinozoa, are present throughout the post-impact succession, and asaphids, almost as persistent, became established at an early date, burrowers were somewhat reluctant to enter and remopleuridids and small strophomenids came in at a late stage. We suggest as a result of this study that structures formed by impact may offer unique information about the palaeogeology and palaeoenvironment of the region hit by the impact.
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