Type Locality:

No specific type section designated. General area 15 km north and south of Isachsen weather station on northern Ellef Ringnes Island is considered as the type area.

Distribution:

Strata equivalent to the type Deer Bay Formation occur on Ellef Ringnes, King Christian, Amund Ringnes, and northwestern Axel Heiberg Islands. The maximum recorded thickness of the Deer Bay in these areas is 1,375 m (eastern Ellef Ringnes). Deer Bay strata in the sense of Balkwill (in press) occur in the above areas as well as the remainder of Axel Heiberg Island and parts of western Ellesmere Island. These strata are up to 920 m thick (western Axel Heiberg).

Lithology:

Grey, silty shale with interbeds of siltstone and very fine grained sandstone. Concretions of verious composition, size and shape occur throughout. Most obvious are large , buff, calcitic and sideritic mudstone concretions up to 5 m long which are common in the lower portion of the formation.

Relationship:

The Deer Bay Formation of the central Arctic (Heywood, 1955, 1957) conformably overlies the Jaeger and is conformably overlain by the Isachsen Formation. The Deer Bay of the type area includes strata that are equivalent, to the east, to the upper member of the Savik, the Awingak, and the Deer Bay Formations (i.e. the restricted Deer Bay of Balkwill, in press). In the southwestern Arctic the Mould Bay is equivalent to the Deer Bay Formation.

History:

The term Deer Bay is presently used for two different shale intervals in the Arctic Islands. Heywood (1955, 1957) named shales lying beneath the Isachsen Formation on northern Ellef Ringnes Island the Deer Bay Formation but he did not observe the base of the unit. Stott (1969) mapped the base of the formation in the type region at the top of glauconitic sandstones assigned to the Jaeger Formation. However, before 1969 the term Deer Bay had been used on Axel Heiberg and Ellesmere Islands for a shale unit lying between the Isachsen and Awingak Formations (Souther, 1963; Fricker, 1963; Tozer 1963g). These strata are equivalent to the upper portion of the type Deer Bay Formation. Balkwill (in press) has attempted to resolve the problem of dual useage of the term by redefining the Deer Bay as the shale unit lying between the Isachsen and either the Awingak Formation or the newly named Ringnes Formation. A problem remains with this solution, however: the Ringnes Formation has not been distinguishable in the subsurface.

Other Citations:

Heywood, 1955, 1957; Fricker, 1963; Souther, 1963; Tozer, 1963g; Stott, 1969; Kemper, 1975; Balkwill and Roy, 1977; Balkwill et al., 1977; Balkwill, in press.