
De Geerdalen is a valley in
Nordenskiöld Land
Nordenskiöld Land is the land area between Isfjorden and Van Mijenfjorden on Spitsbergen, Svalbard. The area is named after Finnish-Swedish explorer and geologist Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. The coastal region of Nordenskiöld Land (Nordensk ...
at
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...
,
Svalbard
Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...
. It is named after Swedish geologist and Arctic explorer
Gerard De Geer. The mountain pass of
Kreklingpasset divides De Geerdalen from
Helvetiadalen. The river of
De Geerelva flows through the valley, and
debouches into
Sassenfjorden at
Elveneset.
Geology
The valley has given name to the
Triassic De Geerdalen Formation, dated from late
Carnian to early
Norian
The Norian is a division of the Triassic Period. It has the rank of an age (geochronology) or stage (chronostratigraphy). It lasted from ~227 to million years ago. It was preceded by the Carnian and succeeded by the Rhaetian.
Stratigraphic defi ...
, which type locality is at the mountain of
Botneheia east of the valley.
References
Valleys of Spitsbergen
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