The origin and genesis of major Jurassic unconformities within the triple junction area of the North Sea, UK

Three Jurassic unconformities of intra-Aalenian, intra-Callovian and intra-middle Oxfordian age are consistently identified within the literature for the North Sea region but despite their common recognition these unconformities remain poorly understood and they are essentially spatially and temporally unconstrained. The recent development of a sequence stratigraphic framework for the Jurassic of the North Sea allows for a thorough investigation of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the intra-Callovian and intra-Oxfordian unconformities and these data have important implications for Middle and Late Jurassic rifting within the North Sea region. The intra-Aalenian unconformity is believed to have been generated as a result of an increase in geothermal gradient within the area and subsequent thermal uplift that preceded rifting. The stratigraphic gap associated with this unconformity increases towards the proposed location of a Middle Jurassic, triple junction centred dome. In contrast the stratigraphic break associated with the intra-Callovian and the intramiddle Oxfordian unconformities is found to increase onto what are now intra-rift highs and rift margin areas. These unconformities occur at the same time as distinct changes in the geometry of the fill of the triple junction and also occur at the same time as seismic scale extension. They do not appear to correlate to any supposed global fall in relative sea-level. Stratigraphic data indicate that three phases of extension occurred during the Callovian, middle and late Oxfordian and lastly during the Kimmeridgian and Volgian. Although the intra-Callovian and intra-middle Oxfordian unconformities can be confused with the effects of the Middle Jurassic North Sea dome unconformity, they are in fact the result of extension during the initial Callovian and Middle/late Oxfordian rift phases. The recognition of these regional unconformities suggests that the Middle and Late Jurassic rifting process was punctuated rather than being continuous.