The terminal Mesoproterozoic was a period of widespread tectonic convergence globally, culminating in the amalgamation of the Rodinia supercontinent. However, in Laurentia, long-lived orogenesis on its eastern margin was punctuated by short-lived extension that generated the Midcontinent Rift ca. 1110–1090 Ma. Whereas this cratonic rift basin is typically considered an isolated occurrence, a series of new depositional ages demonstrate that multiple cratonic basins in northern Laurentia originated around this time. We present a Re-Os isochron date of 1087.1 ± 5.9 Ma from organic-rich shales of the Agu Bay Formation of the Fury and Hecla Basin, which is one of four closely spaced cratonic basins spanning from northeastern Canada to northwestern Greenland known as the Bylot basins. This age is identical, within uncertainty, to ages from the Midcontinent Rift and the Amundsen Basin in northwestern Canada. These ages imply that the late Mesoproterozoic extensional episode in Laurentia was widespread and likely linked to a common origin. We propose that significant thermal anomalies and mantle upwelling related to supercontinent assembly centered around the Midcontinent Rift influenced the reactivation of crustal weaknesses in Arctic Laurentia beginning ca. 1090 Ma, triggering the formation of a series of cratonic basins.

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The Bylot basins of northeastern Canada and northwestern Greenland comprise the Borden, Aston-Hunting, Fury and Hecla, and Thule basins. This system of late Mesoproterozoic (ca. 1.27– 1.0 Ga) sedimentary basins preserves an important record of present-day northeastern Laurentia coincident with the emplacement of the Mackenzie Large Igneous Province, the Shawinigan and Ottawan phases of the Grenville orogeny, and the development of the Midcontinent Rift. However, establishing correlations between the sedimentary successions of the Bylot basins has been hindered by the absence of robust chronostratigraphic constraints. As a result, the degree to which these basins were interconnected, whether they share a common tectonostratigraphic history, and how their sedimentary patterns relate to regional tectonic events remain open questions. Recent Re-Os geochronology from organic-rich strata has yielded depositional ages from the Borden (1048 Ma and 1046 Ma) and Fury and Hecla (1087 Ma) basins, which we integrate with existing models for the depositional history of these basins to derive three tectonostratigraphic assemblages from the Bylot basins. We project our refined tectonostratigraphic framework for the Borden and Fury and Hecla successions to Greenland in order to establish a testable hypothesis for how the Thule Supergroup fits into this tectonostratigraphic picture.