Geology of Greenland
Greenland is the largest island on Earth. Only one-fifth of its surface area is exposed bedrock, the rest being covered by ice. The exposed surface is approximately 410,000 km2.
The
The Isua Greenstone Belt in the Isukasia area, southwest Greenland, is extraordinary in that it contains some of the oldest bedrock on the planet, approximately 3800 million years old. The bedrock is not nearly as metamorphosed as the surrounding gneiss bedrock and is therefore of interest for answering how the Earth's surface appeared billions of years ago. There is a massive magnetite resource in this area.
There are large deposits of rare-earth oxides at Kvanefjeld.
Greenland's first gold mine is the Nalunaq mine, which opened in 2004. Nalunaq is located 33 km northeast of
The Skaergaard intrusion is a layered mafic intrusion in eastern Greenland formed 55 million years ago during the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean. Skaergaard is one of the world's foremost examples of a layered mafic intrusion which exhibits exceptionally well-developed cumulate layering.
A recent study reported that there is a hot
Fossils
A number of fossils were collected in Greenland, mostly on the east coast, from Paleozoic to Holocene, from which the Devonian
See also
Notes
- ^ "Greenland Geology." Archived 2013-05-17 at the Wayback Machine Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. 20 June 2003 (retrieved 26 Dec 2010)
- ^ Nalunaq Gold Mine, information courtesy of the mine owner.
- .
- ^ Jarvik, Erik (15 April 1996). "The Devonian tetrapod Ichthyostega" (PDF). Fossils and Strata. 40: 1–206.
- ^ "Study investigates life histories of earliest known tetrapods". Community Research and Development Information Service. European Commission.
- ^ Lallensack, J. N., Klein, H., Milàn, J., Wings, O., Mateus, O., & Clemmensen, L. B. (2017). Sauropodomorph dinosaur trackways from the Fleming Fjord Formation of East Greenland: evidence for Late Triassic sauropods. Acta Palaeontol Pol