Biostratigraphy and paleoceanography of the Cretaceous seaway between Norway and Greenland

• Published in: Earth-science reviews 1999-05, Vol.46 (1), p.27-98
• Main Authors: Gradstein, F.M, Kaminski, M.A, Agterberg, F.P
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cretaceous seaway; Geology; Greenland; Marine; Norway; Oceanography; Oceans; petroleum stratigraphy; quantitative foraminiferal zonation
• ISSN: 0012-8252; 1872-6828
• DOI: 10.1016/S0012-8252(99)00018-5

The narrow seaway between Greenland and Norway, in Cretaceous time was over 1500 km long and 300+ km wide, and partly of bathyal water depth during Aptian through Campanian. It received a large volume of fine-grained, siliciclastic sediments, with intercalated, gravity-flow sandstone wedges. As a conduit for heat transport between the low latitudes and polar region, Atlantic watermasses particularly affected the eastern, Norwegian margin of this seaway. Despite its high-latitude setting, calcareous and few siliceous planktonic microfossils thus play an important role in regional stratigraphy and facies analysis, and a majority of fossil events correlate to NW European basins. The eastern margin sedimentary succession may be subdivided in several broad lithologic units: (1) Thin, multicolored, marly sediments of Hauterivian–Barremian age, with a shallow marine Falsogaudryina/nodosariid/ostracod assemblage; (2) Dark mudstones and minor sands, Aptian-early Cenomanian in age, with an upper bathyal, agglutinated assemblage, and monotypic Hedbergella floods; (3) Thick mudstone facies with thin, slope-apron turbidite sands, and an impoverished benthic/planktonic assemblage of late Cenomanian–Coniacian age, deposited in an upper bathyal, oxic/dysaerobic environment. Where Turonian sedimentation rates are low, a planktonic foraminiferal assemblage with Whiteinella, Hedbergella, Dicarinella, and Marginotruncana occurs; (4) Grayish, laminated mudstones, Santonian–Campanian in age, with local sands in the north, a low diversity, middle to upper bathyal benthic/planktonic foraminiferal assemblage, and an Inoceramus prisms and radiolarian/diatom flood; a Campanian agglutinated foraminiferal bloom also is known from the Atlantic oceanic realm; (5) More marly sediments of Maastrichtian age, with a low diversity planktonic/benthic foraminiferal assemblage. Using the distribution of 1755 foraminiferal and dinoflagellate microfossil events in over 30 exploration wells, a RASC (Ranking and Scaling) probabilistic zonation served as a template to build a Cretaceous zonal model with 19 assemblage and interval zones, including over 100 events. Variance analysis ranks 72 events according to reliability in correlation. Three new index taxa include Uvigerinammina una and Ammoanita globorotaliaeformis (Albian), and Fenestrella bellii (Campanian). Widespread planktonic flood events occur in late Albian through early Cenomanian, early–mid Turonian, late Santonian–earliest Campanian and