Middle Cretaceous to Eopleistocene Sequences on the New Siberian Islands: an approach to interpret offshore seismic

The New Siberian Islands divide the Laptev Sea from the East Siberian Sea. The Archipelago comprises three island groups: De Long Islands, Anjou Islands, and Lyakhov Islands. The regional structural ensemble comprises De Long, Kotel'nyi, Faddeya and Lyakhov tectonic Domains. Aptian-Albian, Late Cretaceous, Palaeocene-Eocene, Oligocene-Miocene, and Pliocene-Eopleistocene tectono-stratigraphic and igneous sequences have been identified on the Islands. The succession of these sequences and their structural and compositional characters provide to distinguish specific stages in the tectonic history of the region showing alteration of regional tectonic environment through the middle Cretaceous and the Tertiary correlative to major North-East Eurasia, Arctic, and Global events. LS1, LS2, and LS3 major regional unconformities have been identified offshore by German geoscientists based on MCS data in the New Siberian Islands area. It is hypothesized in this paper that three offshore sedimentary cover units bounded by the unconformities correlate to the onshore sequences the following way: Unit I comprises Aptian-Albian and late Cretaceous Sequences, Unit II, Palaeocene-Eocene and Oligocene-Miocene Sequences, and Unit III comprises Pliocene-Eopleistocene Sequence and overlying Quaternary sediments. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.