Context: A microcontinent has been recently discovered in the Davis Strait, between Canada and Greenland.

Key points

• The discovery was made around the Davis Strait, a large stretch of water located between Canada’s Baffin Island and Greenland.
• The strait was formed millions of years ago when the tectonic plates between the two islands shifted, reconfiguring the Earth’s crust.
• This resulted in the formation of a thick continental crust in the ocean, which has now been declared a newly discovered primitive microcontinent.
• It has been named the Davis Strait proto-microcontinent since it formed owing to the tectonic evolution of the strait in the region

Davis Strait

• The Davis Strait is a southern arm of the Arctic Ocean that lies north of the Labrador Sea.
• Also known as the northern arm of the Atlantic Ocean, the Davis Strait lies between mid-western Greenland and Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada.
• The strait was named for the English explorer John Davis (1550–1605), who explored the area while seeking a Northwest Passage. By the 1650s it was used for whale hunting
• It separates the depths of northern Baffin Bay from the southern Labrador sea and forms an important part of the Northwest passage route going through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans
• It is underlain by complex geological features of buried grabens (basins) and ridges, formed by strike-slip faulting of the Ungava Fault Zone during Paleogene times about 45 million to 62 million years ago.
• Two different ocean currents are active in the Davis Strait having contrasting temperatures leading to varying concentrations of ice on the eastern and the western sides of the Strait
• The varied topography of the Strait gives rise to rich aquatic biodiversity. Thousands of coral colonies and many types of sponges, sea anemones and colourful fish, including Greenland’s only Lophelia Pertusa reef, are found in the deep sea slopes of the strait.
• One of the six rare species of corals, the Lophelia Pertusa are known to form cold-water reefs and unlike many warm-water corals, these do not require any light to grow and flourish.