Sassendalen Gp

Name The group is named after a major valley in central Spitsbergen.

Type area Sassendalen, central Spitsbergen.

Thickness Up to 700 m in Svalbard, up to 1000 m on the Barents Sea Shelf.

Lithology The Sassendalen Group comprises clastic sediments of Early and Middle Triassic age in Svalbard and on the Barents Sea Shelf. Dominant lithologies are shales and siltstones with subordinate sandstones and minor amounts of carbonate rocks.

Distribution The group is exposed along the Tertiary fold-thrust belt on western Spitsbergen, in central and eastern Spitsbergen, as well as on Barentsøya, Edgeøya, southwestern Nordaustlandet and Bjørnøya. It continues in the subsurface between these islands southwards in the Barents Sea Shelf to the Hammerfest Basin.

Age Early and Middle Triassic.

Depositional environment The group represents coastal, deltaic to shallow shelf deposits in western Spitsbergen. These coastal sediments grade eastwards and southwards into shelf mudstones. The upper part is very organic-rich and phosphatic. In the southwestern Barents Sea Shelf shallow to deep shelf sediments were deposited. The Sassendalen Group represents a series of stacked transgressive-regressive successions, each formation being initiated by a regionally significant transgression (Mørk et al. 1989). These successions can also be traced across the Barents Sea Shelf to Arctic Canada and Eastern Siberia (Mørk et al. 1989; Egorov and Mørk, in press).

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