The Geological Work of the Cambridge Expedition to East Greenland in 1929

Abstract

East Greenland, a country of high coastal mountains receding under the cap-ice and of great fjords bounded by towering cliffs, has, within the last decade, attracted once again the attention of investigators. After an unsuccessful attempt in 1923, Mr. J. M. Wordie succeeded in reaching land and exploring Gael Hamkes Bay and Franz Josef Fjord in the very favourable ice year of 1926 (Wordie, 1927). That same summer, Dr. Lauge Koch took a party to Scoresby Sound, and himself made a sledge-journey the next spring northwards to Germania Land, returning by way of the fjords (Koch, 1929). Since Dr. Koch wished to elucidate further the stratigraphy of the Palæozoic rocks in 1929, the third Cambridge Expedition of 1929 concentrated mainly upon a determination of certain tectonic problems in the pre-Old Red Sandstone rocks, and upon a journey inland from Kjerulf Fjord into unknown country (Wordie, 1930). Had time permitted, a party was to sledge from the head of Gael Hamkes Bay as far north as Queen Louise Land, in order to determine the relations existing there between the sedimentary and metamorphic outcrops; but owing to delay in the pack-ice, this plan had to be abandoned. The large fjords, Franz Josef Fjord and King Oscar Fjord, are connected through Antarctic Sound, and measure respectively about 110 miles and 45 miles in length. They have many branches, most of which traverse the rock-sequences across the dip, and afford cliff-sections of multicoloured bare rock, often attaining 6000 feet in height. The fjord-system is

East Greenland Caledonides—an extension of the British Caledonides

“…New fieldwork has shown that the Gletscherland complex and Hagar sheet have many features characteristic of basement gneiss complexes (Friderichsen & Higgins 1976, Higgins et al 1977, an interpretation in line with the much earlier views of, e.g. Parkinson & Whittard (1931) and Odell (1939Odell ( , 1944 who suggested the crystalline complexes were Archaean. However, with the exception of the approximate 2450 Ma age at T~erskeldal in the southern part of the Gletscherland complex all Rb-Sr whole rock isochron ages so far obtained from the region have given early Proterozoic ages rangingfrom 2000-1705 Ma ( Fig.…”

The Eleonore Sø and Målebjerg foreland windows, East Greenland Caledonides, and the demise of the ‘stockwerke’ concept

“…the collision of Laurentia with Baltica, took place several hundred kilometres east-south-east of the orogenic belt now preserved onshore in East Greenland. Wordie (1930) and Parkinson & Whittard (1931) were, in fact, partly correct when they compared the crystalline gneisses of the inner fjord region of East Greenland to the Archaean Lewisian gneisses of Scotland. The former have yielded Archaean and Proterozoic protolith ages, with Archaean gneiss complexes extending throughout the inner part of the Scoresby Sund region and northwards to southern Suess Land (72°50′N).…”

“…However, at this time the gneisses of the inner fjords between Scoresby Sund and Kejser Franz Joseph Fjord were still considered to be Archaean. Meanwhile, British geologists working in the inner part of the Kong Oscar Fjord region compared the gneisses and metasedimentary rocks of the so called 'Central Metamorphic Complex' to the Lewisian and Dalradian of Scotland, and concluded that the Caledonian orogeny was 'superficial' (Wordie 1930;Parkinson & Whittard 1931). Helge Backlund investigated the same region, but reached a different interpretation (Backlund 1930(Backlund , 1932.…”

The ammonite succession in the Middle Jurassic of East Greenland

“…The four new species created by Spath are all based on types too poorly preserved to be closely identifiable. They are part of a collection made by Whittard in 1929 at AntarcticHavn during the Cambndge expedition of that year (Parkinson & Whittard 1931) and came from a single bed about a metre thick in an immense succession of barren sandstones. The locality has been rediscovered (sections 84-86) but newly collected material is no better than what was available previously.…”