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Cenozoic motion between East and West Antarctica

Nature volume 404, pages 145–150 (2000)Cite this article

Abstract

The West Antarctic rift system is the result of late Mesozoic and Cenozoic extension between East and West Antarctica, and represents one of the largest active continental rift systems on Earth. But the timing and magnitude of the plate motions leading to the development of this rift system remain poorly known, because of a lack of magnetic anomaly and fracture zone constraints on seafloor spreading. Here we report on magnetic data, gravity data and swath bathymetry collected in several areas of the south Tasman Sea and northern Ross Sea. These results enable us to calculate mid-Cenozoic rotation parameters for East and West Antarctica. These rotations show that there was roughly 180 km of separation in the western Ross Sea embayment in Eocene and Oligocene time. This episode of extension provides a tectonic setting for several significant Cenozoic tectonic events in the Ross Sea embayment including the uplift of the Transantarctic Mountains and the deposition of large thicknesses of Oligocene sediments. Inclusion of this East–West Antarctic motion in the plate circuit linking the Australia, Antarctic and Pacific plates removes a puzzling gap between the Lord Howe rise and Campbell plateau found in previous early Tertiary reconstructions of the New Zealand region. Determination of this East–West Antarctic motion also resolves a long standing controversy regarding the contribution of deformation in this region to the global plate circuit linking the Pacific to the rest of the world.

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Figure 1: Classification of regions of southwest Pacific ocean crust by the spreading ridge at which they were formed.
Figure 2: Two reconstructions of the Southwest Pacific for chron 20 constructed by restoring motion along the Pacific–Antarctica–Australia plate circuit.
Figure 3: Tectonic features of the western Ross Sea region superimposed on the satellite-derived free-air gravity field.
Figure 4: Projected bathymetric and magnetic profiles compared to magnetic models.
Figure 5: Misfit of anomalies east of the Balleny fracture zone caused by East–West Antarctic motion.
Figure 6: Data constraining the three-plate solution for the Adare triple junction at chron 13o.
Figure 7: Amount of extension in the western Ross Sea embayment between chrons 13o and 8o (33–26 Myr).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the captains, officers, crews and scientific staff of the RV Ewing and RVIB Palmer for their dedicated efforts. We also thank B. Luyendyk and R. Sutherland for helpful comments. The project was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation (S. C. C. and J. M. S.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Scripps Institution of Oceanography , La Jolla, 92093-0215, California, USA

    Steven C. Cande

  2. California Institute of Technology , Mail Stop 252-21, Pasadena, 91125, California , USA

    Joann M. Stock

  3. School of Geosciences, Building F05, The University of Sydney, 2006, New South Wales, Australia

    R. Dietmar Müller

  4. Geological Survey of Japan, 1-1-3 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8567 , Ibaraki, Japan

    Takemi Ishihara

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Correspondence to Steven C. Cande.

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Cande, S., Stock, J., Müller, R. et al. Cenozoic motion between East and West Antarctica. Nature 404, 145–150 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35004501

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