Talk
Mountains graphic with white diamonds on itGeoscience and Exploration

The Fury and Hecla Geoscience Project: Overview of the 2019 thematic research on Melville Peninsula, Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 - 4:00pm to 4:20pm Theatre One

Author(s)

A. Ielpi (Presenting)
Laurentian University
M. Patzke
Laurentian University
J.W. Greenman
McGill University
G.P. Halverson
McGill University

The Fury and Hecla Geoscience Project is a multi-disciplinary initiative that involves regional mapping and thematic research in the areas of Baffin Island and Melville Peninsula surrounding the Fury and Hecla Strait, in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut. The project is led by the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office, and thematic research is performed through collaborations with Laurentian University, McGill University, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. In the year of 2018, a first field season focussed on bedrock exposures located in Baffin Island. In the year of 2019, field activities continued in Baffin Island, but the major focus of thematic work shifted to mapping and resolving the stratigraphy of the Fury and Hecla Group on Melville Peninsula and islands within the Fury and Hecla Strait. Thematic work also includes laboratory analyses on sample suites collected in the previous year.

We provide an overview of thematic work on the Fury and Hecla Group, a thick succession of sedimentary rocks of inferred Mesoproterozoic age that broadly correlate to other successions of the Bylot basinal system in northeastern Nunavut and northwestern Greenland. The Fury and Hecla Group is comprised of predominantly shallow-marine rocks of the sandstone-dominated Nyeboe and Sikosak Bay formations, the shale-rich Agu Bay Formation, the sandstone-dominated Whyte Inlet Formation, and the sandy to muddy Autridge Formation. Thematic research on the sandstone-dominated units is aimed at resolving their sedimentary facies, stratigraphy, depositional architecture, and provenance. Such research was performed on exceptional exposures laterally and vertically continuous over kilometres, and a suite of samples analyzed through sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe to reconstruct the age structure of detrital zircon. Organic-rich shale units of the Agu Bay and Autridge formations were targeted for redox-sensitive geochemical, paleobiological, and Re-Os analyses to expand on the rich geobiological archive represented by the Bylot basins, provide new geochronological constraints and the Fury and Hecla Group, and establish more robust correlations with other Bylot basins.