Strike-slip fault system in the Earth's crust of the Bering Sea: A relic of boundary between the Eurasian and North American lithospheric plates

摘要

A study based on computation of D-function anomalies (method of joint gravity and magnetic data analysis) along profiles in the Bering Sea has been performed in both the Aleutian Basin with oceanic crust and the Bering continental shelf. This study revealed extended faults that affect not only the Earth's crust but also the upper mantle. This is supported by seismic profiling. The calculated palinspastic reconstructions of the position of North America relative to "immobile" Eurasia 80, 52-50, 50-47, and 15-20 Ma ago allowed us to show that the revealed strike-slip faults are probable relics of an echeloned transform boundary between the Eurasian and North American lithospheric plates. The formation of this boundary beginning from the Late Cretaceous was apparently related to opening of the North Atalantic, which determined the large rate of displacement of North America relative to Eurasia.