The Eurasian Basin, or Eurasia Basin, is one of the two major basins into which the Arctic Basin of the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...

is split by the

Lomonosov Ridge The Lomonosov Ridge (russian: Хребет Ломоносова, da, Lomonosovryggen) is an unusual underwater ridge of continental crust in the Arctic Ocean. It spans between the New Siberian Islands over the central part of the ocean to Ell ...

(other being the

Amerasia Basin The Amerasia Basin, or Amerasian Basin, is one of the two major basins from which the Arctic Ocean can be subdivided (the other one being the Eurasian Basin). The triangular-shaped Amerasia Basin broadly extends from the Canadian Arctic Islands to ...

). The Eurasia Basin may be seen as an extension of the North Atlantic Basin through

Fram Strait The Fram Strait is the passage between Greenland and Svalbard, located roughly between 77°N and 81°N latitudes and centered on the prime meridian. The Greenland and Norwegian Seas lie south of Fram Strait, while the Nansen Basin of the Arcti ...

. It is further split by the mid-ocean

Gakkel Ridge The Gakkel Ridge (formerly known as the Nansen Cordillera and Arctic Mid-Ocean Ridge) is a mid-oceanic ridge, a divergent tectonic plate boundary between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. It is located in the Eurasian Basin of the ...

into the

Nansen Basin The Nansen Basin (also Central Basin, formerly Fram Basin) is an abyssal plain with water-depths of around 3 km in the Arctic Ocean and (together with the deeper Amundsen Basin) part of the Eurasian Basin. It is named after Fridtjof Nansen. The ...

and the

Amundsen Basin The Amundsen Basin, with depths up to , is the deepest abyssal plain in the Arctic Ocean, and contains the geographic North Pole. The Amundsen Basin is embraced by the Lomonosov Ridge (from to ) and the Gakkel Ridge (from to ). It is named after ...

. The latter basin is the deepest one of the

and the geographic

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distinguish from the Ma ...

is located there. The Eurasian Basin is bounded by

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland ...

, the

, and the shelves of the

Laptev Sea The Laptev Sea ( rus, мо́ре Ла́птевых, r=more Laptevykh; sah, Лаптевтар байҕаллара, translit=Laptevtar baỹğallara) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, t ...

Kara Sea The Kara Sea (russian: Ка́рское мо́ре, ''Karskoye more'') is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipel ...

and

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; no, Barentshavet, ; russian: Баренцево море, Barentsevo More) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian terr ...

. The maximum depth within the Eurasian Basin is reached at the Litke Deep with 5449 m depth. Today, the Gakkel Ridge is the site of some of the slowest

seafloor spreading Seafloor spreading or Seafloor spread is a process that occurs at mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge. History of study Earlier theories by Alfred Wegener a ...

on the Earth, with 10 mm/yr near the Fram Strait and 6 mm/yr near the Laptev Sea. Initial opening of the Eurasian Basin is constrained by magnetic anomaly and geologic information to the

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configu ...

: it was first created about 53 Million years ago by the spreading of the sea floor."Plate Tectonics Model for the Evolution of the Arctic", ''Geology'', vol. 2, Issue 8, p.377 (1974)

References

Oceanic basins of the Arctic Ocean Abyssal plains {{arctic-stub