Tectonic evolution of the Taimyr Peninsula, northern Russia: implications for Arctic continental assembly

New field data from the Taimyr Peninsula, northern Russia, indicate that models for the tectonic evolution of Arctic Eurasia need substantial reassessment. The late Palaeozoic structural history of central Taimyr is characterized by thin-skinned thrusting that may be related to the Permo-Carboniferous Uralian orogeny, with southern Taimyr as the distal foreland. These structures were reworked in later folding and strike-slip regimes of probable Late Triassic age. The new model suggests that no oceanic tract survived between the Arctic continental mass and western Siberia after the Permian, and has implications for understanding sediment dispersal and deformation over a vast region.