Modelling the thermal history of onshore Ireland, Britain and its offshore basins using low-temperature thermochronology

Abstract

The main goal of this PhD thesis is to investigate the early Cenozoic exhumation history of Ireland and Britain. The causal mechanism for early Cenozoic exhumation on this sector of the NW European margin remains contentious, but broadly can be divided into two main competing hypotheses; i), exhumation caused by mantle-driven processes associated with the development of the proto-Iceland mantle plume and ii), exhumation related to compressional forces associated with the effects of the opening of the North Atlantic Ocean and the Alpine collision. n this thesis, a combination of apatite fission track (AFT) and apatite (U-Th-Sm)/He (AHe) dating was employed to discriminate between these two hypotheses. Both of these low-temperature thermochronology techniques have the advantage that they can be applied in the absence of strata straddling the time of exhumation. This is the case for the Irish Sea region where onshore Cenozoic rocks are sparse. Sample locations were focused around the Irish Sea region, and extended into Wales, central and western Ireland and Scotland, so that the limits of hypothesised Cenozoic exhumation could be determined.