Notes on the late Cenozoic history of the Washington Land area, western North Greenland

Abstract

Information on Late Tertiary and Quaternary deposits in the Washington Land area is extremely limited. This is perhaps surprising since, as a central part of Nares Strait separating Greenland and Canada, the Washington Land area is crucial to the understanding of the much debated Late Quaternary history of the region. Three shell samples, two wood samples and a peat sample, collected in the mid 1970s, have been radiocarbon dated and discussed by Weidick (1977, 1978), Jepsen (1982), Blake (1987) and Bennike & Jepsen (in press); wood samples collected in 1997 were described by Bennike (1998). Much more information is available from Inglefield Land to the south, and Hall Land to the north (Nichols 1969; Dawes 1987; Blake et al. 1992; Kelly & Bennike 1992). Thus, when the opportunity to carry out field work in the Washington Land area arose in connection with the project Kane Basin 1999 (see Dawes 2000a, this volume), the chance was taken to attempt to fill this knowledge gap. The main aim was to locate the source of the wood – hopefully within a sedimentary sequence. In addition, observations and sampling of Quaternary deposits and landforms were planned. However, since the source of the wood proved impossible to locate, more time was spent on Quaternary deposits than originally expected.