Crustal evolution of northern Alaska inferred from sedimentology and structural relations of the Kandik area

One of the most complete stratigraphic sections in North America crops out in east central Alaska and western Yukon Territory north of the Tintina fault. These uppermost Precambrian to uppermost Mesozoic strata record, in ascending order: a late Precambrian and Paleozoic continental rifting and margin subsidence history, a Late Devonian orogenic pulse possibly coinciding with a eustatic low stand, continental margin uplift of at least 3 km in the Carboniferous, renewed subsidence in Permian and Triassic time, uplift of the ancestral Brooks Range in the Early Cretaceous, opening of the Canada Basin in mid‐Cretaceous to Late Cretaceous time resulting in counterclockwise rotation of all of northern Alaska and parts of western Yukon Territory including the Kandik area, and a crustal sag that evolved into the Yukon Flats. The latter resulted from transtensional slip along the Tintina fault reflecting plate motions dictated by kinematics of the Pacific realm. The rotation of northern Alaska was about a pole located near Mackenzie Delta and transpired between Barremian and Campanian time (circa 120 to 80 Ma).