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Plate tectonics

The Antarctic connection

Nature volume 404, pages 139–140 (2000)Cite this article

Today, Antarctica seems to be part of a single tectonic plate. But there is clear palaeomagnetic evidence that, in the past, there has been a large relative rotation between different parts of the continent1. A central issue has been how much, if any, of this motion has occurred during the past 80 million years or so. Cande et al.2 (page 145 of this issue) now present data that reveal an extinct plate-tectonic boundary between the two parts of Antarctica, East and West, thereby enabling them to estimate that motion. East Antarctica is the larger and has been a stable part of a nearly rigid plate for hundreds of millions of years. West Antarctica, by contrast, is probably an amalgamation of many smaller pieces that were assembled in the past few hundred million years. The significance of Cande and colleagues' study goes well beyond Antarctica, however, because motion in Antarctica is a central element in reconstructing plate-tectonic motions around the globe.

To understand the evolution of the plate margins surrounding the Pacific Ocean, one would like to know the displacement history of the plates of the Pacific basin relative to the surrounding continental plates. During seafloor spreading the polarity of the geomagnetic field, which reverses on average every half million years or so, is locked into newly created and cooling crust, thus preserving a record of the history of relative motion of the sea floor flanking a mid-ocean ridge. Processes at converging plate boundaries, however, leave no useful record for estimating the relative plate motions that have occurred across them. To estimate the motion across such boundaries, a so-called ‘plate-motion circuit’ through a series of mid-ocean ridges is needed.

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Figure 1: Global plate-motion circuits for much of the past 80 million years.
Figure 2

(Map reproduced from ref. 13, courtesy of Walter H. F. Smith.)

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  1. Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of California, on sabbatical leave from the Department of Geology and Geophysics, Rice University, Berkeley, 94720-4767, California, USA

    Richard G. Gordon

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Correspondence to Richard G. Gordon.

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Gordon, R. The Antarctic connection. Nature 404, 139–140 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35004703

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