Sandstone Provenance Studies in East Greenland and Mid-Norway Provide Insights into Cretaceous and Tertiary Sediment Transport Paths in The Norway-Greenland Rift

A heavy mineral study was undertaken on over 900 Jurassic-Recent sandstone samples from the Norway-Greenland rift. These sandstones were from outcrops in East Greenland and wells in Mid-Norway. Conventional heavy mineral analysis was supplemented with geochemical analysis of garnets and tourmalines from selected samples. A more limited subset was selected for SHRIMP U-Pb dating of detrital zircon grains.

The heavy mineral work has enabled identification of six distinct sediment source terrains, MN1- MN6. Zircon age dating indicates that the Greenland margin of the rift supplied sediment with distinctive populations of Early Proterozoic and Archean zircons (sand types MN2, MN4, MN6), which are absent in sediment supplied from source areas on the Norwegian margin (sand types MN1, MN3, MN5). All these source terrains are long-lived and have provided sands to the rift since at least the Jurassic. However, the influence of different source areas has varied through time and also spatially, for example, sand type MN2 is found widely distributed in the Vøring Basin of Mid-Norway during the Late Cretaceous and Tertiary. These observations have important implications for understanding reservoir presence and distribution.