Abstract
AbstractEast Antarctic provinces lay at the heart of both Rodinian and Gondwanan supercontinents, yet poor exposure and limited geophysical data provide few constraints on the region’s tectonic evolution. The shape of the Mawson Continent, the stable nucleus of East Antarctica, is one of Antarctica’s most important, but contested features, with implications for global plate reconstructions and local tectonic models. Here we show a major marginal embayment 500–700 km wide, cuts into the East Antarctic basement in the South Pole region. This embayment, defined by new aeromagnetic and other geophysical data, truncates the Mawson Continent, which is distinct from basement provinces flanking the Weddell Sea. We favour a late Neoproterozoic rifting model for embayment formation and discuss analogies with other continental margins. The embayment and associated basement provinces help define the East Antarctic nucleus for supercontinental reconstructions, while the inherited marginal geometry likely influenced evolution of the paleo-Pacific margin of Gondwana.
Funder
RCUK | NERC | British Antarctic Survey
European Space Agency - PolarGAP Campaign
European Space Agency - PolarGAP Campaign European Space Agency - 3D Earth
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Earth and Planetary Sciences,General Environmental Science
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