Late Cenozoic depositional environment of the eastern Arctic Basin

Abstract

The Late Cenozoic depositional environment of the Arctic Ocean has been studied intensively over the past 20 years after the successful recovery of numerous sediment cores from the ice-island station T-3 in the central Arctic. The eastern Arctic Basin has been visited by expeditions only since the late 70s; successful attempts to recover sediment cores have been carried out from the Norwegian polar vessel RV ‘Polarsirkel’, from the Swedish icebreaker ’Ymcr’, from the German icebreaker ‘Polarstern’ and from the two ice-island stations (organized mainly by the US and Norway) ‘Fram I’ and ’Fram IV’. The distribution of coring stations presently available from the eastern Arctic Basin (except the ’Polarstern‘ cores which have been taken 198S1986 in the Fram Strait) is shown in Fig. 1.