Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Growth Of Extensional Faults And Folds During Deposition Of An Evaporite-Dominated Half-Graben Basin; The Carboniferous Billefjorden Trough, Svalbard, Alvar Braathen, Karoline Bælum, Harmon Maher Jr., Simon J. Buckley

Geography and Geology Faculty Publications

Normal-sense movements along two major strands of the Billefjorden Fault Zone controlled sedimentation in the Carboniferous Billefjorden Trough. The Billefjorden Trough is a more than 2000 meters thick, west-dipping half-graben basin where accommodation was provided by combinations of extensional faulting and folding throughout the basin history. Whereas previous workers have interpreted several of these folds as due to Tertiary contraction, we argue that they developed during rifting, as extensional forced folds in the style described by other workers from rifts such as the Gulf of Suez. The present basin geometry indicates that accommodation was facilitated by a combination of fault …