Abstract
From plate tectonic considerations and the poorly known depositional history of the shelves between Svalbard and Greenland we may infer that a shallow water connection was probably established by late Oligocene time between the Arctic Ocean and the Norwegian Sea. By middle Miocene the passage may have deepened to about 2 km. Sediments deposited within the Fram Strait gateway indicate only moderate control by bottom currents and the intensity of the deep circulation has varied little throughout the history of the gateway. This suggest that the Greenland-Faeroe Ridge has always represented a shallower barrier than the Fram Strait and constrained the deep water of the Arctic seas to circulate internally with moderate rates of deep water exchange between the Eurasian Basin and the Greenland-Norwegian Sea.
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Kristoffersen, Y. (1990). On the Tectonic Evolution and Paleoceanographic Significance of the Fram Strait Gateway. In: Bleil, U., Thiede, J. (eds) Geological History of the Polar Oceans: Arctic versus Antarctic. NATO ASI Series, vol 308. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2029-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2029-3_4
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