Severnaya Zemlya broader Shokalsky Strait Bolshevik Island from October Revolution Island. Both straits connect the Kara Sea in the west with the Laptev Sea in the east. This archipelago encloses the northern limits of the Kara Sea on its western shores, together with Novaya Zemlya, located roughly to the southwest. The big rivers Ob and Yenisei, among others, flow from the south into this marginal sea area of the Arctic Ocean, with their abundant waters contributing to a climate with relatively high precipitation despite the prevalent extreme cold temperatures of the high latitude. The Laptev Sea, where the mighty Lena River steadily
Baltica belt of the Timanide orogeny and overlain by Mesoproterozoic sediments. The margin became a passive margin facing an Ural Ocean in the Cambrian-Ordovician. The eastern margin stretches south through the Ural Mountains from the northern end of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. The margin follows the bent shape of Novaya Zemlya which was caused in the Late Permian by the Siberian Traps. It is clear from Baltic endemic fossils in Novaya Zemlya that the islands have been part of Baltica since Early Palaeozoic, whereas the Taymyr Peninsula farther east was part of the passive margin of Siberia in the Early Palaeozoic.