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Cenozoic exhumation of the southern British Isles

Richard R. Hillis¹, Simon P. Holford^2,*, Paul F. Green³, Anthony G. Doré⁴, Robert W. Gatliff⁵, Martyn S. Stoker⁵, Kenneth Thomson^6,, Jonathan P. Turner⁶, John R. Underhill⁷ and Gareth A. Williams⁸

¹ Australian School of Petroleum, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, South Australia 5005, Australia
² School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
³ Geotrack International Pty Ltd, 37 Melville Road, West Brunswick, Victoria 3055, Australia
⁴ StatoilHydro Gulf of Mexico, 2130 City West Boulevard, Suite 800, Houston, Texas 77042, USA
⁵ British Geological Survey, Murchison House, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3LA, UK
⁶ School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK
⁷ School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JW, UK
⁸ British Geological Survey, Keyworth, Nottingham NG12 5GG, UK

Rocks that crop out across southern Britain were exhumed from depths of as much as 2.5 km during Cenozoic time. This has been widely attributed to Paleocene regional uplift resulting from igneous underplating related to the Iceland mantle plume. Our compilation of paleothermal and compaction data reveals spatial and temporal patterns of exhumation showing little correspondence with the postulated influence of underplating, instead being dominated by kilometer-scale variations across Cenozoic compressional structures, which in several basins are demonstrably of Neogene age. We propose that crustal compression, due to plate boundary forces transmitted into the plate interior, was the major cause of Cenozoic uplift in southern Britain, witnessing a high strength crust in western Europe.

Key Words: British Isles • exhumation • compressional deformation • underplating • plate boundary forces

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