A rich and previously unknown inoceramid bivalve fauna from the Early and Late Cretaceous of Kilen, North Greenland

Kilen is a remote semi-nunatak on Kronprins Christians Land in NE Greenland. The sedimentary rocks form part of the Mesozoic Wandel Sea Basin succession which represents one of the only Cretaceous exposures north of 74°N in Greenland (Hovikoski et al., 2018; Svennevig et al., 2018). A previous expedition to the area revealed an unusually rich and diverse inoceramid bivalve fauna but hitherto no systematic data has been published (Håkansson et al., 1993). The successions on Kilen dates from Jurassic–Cretaceous and is dominated by faulted and folded sedimentary rocks. Some beds contain a rich inoceramid fauna sometimes in high diversity communities with other benthic faunas such as other bivalves, brachiopods, gastropods, asteroids, monoplacophores and bryozoans as well as with pelagic species such as ammonites and belemnites.
This talk will present the preliminary results from Kilen comprising inoceramids of middle to late Albian age and inoceramids from early Turonian to possibly earliest Campanian age. At Kilen, the inoceramids were successfully used to date a tectonically complex and disturbed sedimentary sequence and were the means of correlation between localities and profiles. The ages were in some cases supported by ammonite, dinoflagellate cyst or foraminifera data. The study shows that the inoceramids were an important faunal group of the Mesozoic shelf in the Arctic and that the Greenlandic inoceramids show affinities to the North American, European, and Siberian faunas in the Cretaceous.