This document is a brief illustrated description of the geology of Bear Island, which is found half way between north Norway and the south cape of Spitsbergen. The island is about 16 by 20 km in size and exposes a faulted hinge zone within a Upper Carboniferous half graben, with a master border fault submerged to the west. This island provides an isolated exposure in the west central part of the Barents Shelf, and thus the geology here is of interest in interpreting geophysical and other data from adjacent areas of the submerged shelf.
Cliff exposures around the entirety of the island provide excellent exposures.
Devonian through Triassic platform cover strata overlie metamorphic basement that consists of carbonates and phyllites. Permian Miseryfjellet Fm. More than one trend of faults can be seen on the map, suggesting different Carboniferous faulting phases exist. The numbers on the map consecutively refer to the approximate location the 5 photos below were taken from. A thick unit of shallowly dipping and competent carbonates within the basement sequence that form sea cliffs several hundred meters high can give the impression that the basement rocks are only mildly deformed.