We used detrital zircon fractions from the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic sedimentary succession in the Norwegian Barents Sea to constrain the role of eastern provenance areas in the basin infill history of the Northern Pangea Boreal basin. Geochronological data from sedimentary rocks in this succession reveal detrital zircon ages that are very close to the biostratigraphically defined maximum depositional age of the two lowermost intervals: The Norian to Rhaetian Fruholmen Formation show U-Pb minimum ages of 208.3 ± 4.2 Ma (discordant by-0.58) and 213.8 ± 5 Ma (discordant by 0.8), and the Rhaetian to Sinemurian Tubåen Formation is 200.6 ± 4.9 Ma (discordant by-3.99) at its minimum. These are the youngest ages thus far documented in the Norwegian Barents Sea, and they demonstrate that a provenance area was magmatically active while, or shortly before, these formations were being deposited. Such protolith ages have not been documented close to the study area, but based on the regional tectonic setting and paleogeography, we argue that the Novaya Zemlya protrusion of the northern Uralian orogen was the most likely provenance area in the region. The Sinemurian to Pliensbachian Nordmela Formation samples yielded, with an exception of a single detrital zircon age of 211 ± 4.3 Ma, a consistent 240-237 Ma minimum detrital zircon age, which suggests that either the magmatic activity or the sediment supply had come to an end by Sinemurian times. This turnover can be explained by a change in the hinterland drainage pattern. This study documents that eastern provenance areas were actively supplying sediments into the Norwegian Barents Sea Basin later than previously assumed, and our data offer age constraints for tectonic activity in the basin and its hinterland inferred from the changes in sediment supply to the basin.
Present-day catchments adjacent to sedimentary basins may preserve geomorphic elements that have been active through long intervals of time. Relicts of ancient catchments in present-day landscapes may be investigated using mass-balance models and can give important information about upland landscape evolution and reservoir distribution in adjacent basins. However, such methods are in their infancy and are often difficult to apply in deep-time settings due to later landscape modification.The southern Barents Sea margin of N Norway and NW Russia is ideal for investigating source-to-sink models, because it has been subject to minor tectonic activity since the Carboniferous, and large parts have eluded significant Quaternary glacial erosion. A zone close to the present-day coast has likely acted as the boundary between basin and catchments since the Carboniferous. Around the Permian-Triassic transition, a large delta system started to prograde from the same area as the present-day largest river in the area, the Tana River, which has long been interpreted to show features indicating that it was developed prior to present-day topography. We performed a source-to-sink study of this ancient system in order to investigate potential linkages between present-day geomorphology and ancient deposits.We investigated the sediment load of the ancient delta using well, core, twodimensional and three-dimensional seismic data, and digital elevation models to investigate the geomorphology of the onshore catchment and surrounding areas. Our results imply that the present-day GSA Bulletin; January/February 2018; v. 130 Tana catchment was formed close to the Permian-Triassic transition, and that the Triassic delta system has much better reservoir properties compared to the rest of Triassic basin infill. This implies that landscapes may indeed preserve catchment geometries for extended periods of time, and it demonstrates that source-to-sink techniques can be instrumental in predicting the extent and quality of subsurface reservoirs.
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