Search

Undeformed rhyolite and granophyre in the Coats Land crustal block of East Antarctica, dated as 1112 ± 4 Ma, are identical in age to both the Umkondo large igneous province (LIP) of the Kalahari craton (southern Africa) and the early Keweenawan LIP of Laurentia (North America). Although marine and satellite data demonstrate that Coats Land was close to Kalahari within the Gondwana supercontinent, the Coats Land rocks yield Pb isotope compositions strikingly distinct from those of the Umkondo province, yet indistinguishable from rocks of the Keweenawan province. The anorogenic Red Bluff granitic suite, along the present-day southern Laurentian margin in the Franklin Mountains (Texas, USA), is of comparable age, general rock type, and Pb isotope composition to rocks of Coats Land and may provide a piercing point for a Coats Land-Laurentia link. Paleomagnetic poles permit the Coats Land block to be close to this part of Laurentia ca. 1100 Ma and allow juxtaposition of Kalahari and southern Laurentia ca. 1000 Ma. The Coats Land crustal block may therefore be a critical tectonic tracer for placing Laurentia within late Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic paleogeographic reconstructions. If this hypothesis is correct, Laurentia collided with the Kalahari craton along Antarctica1s Maud orogen, which would represent a continuation of the ca. 1000 Ma Grenville orogen of eastern and southern Laurentia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The southern highlands of the Moon comprise superposed ejecta layers, individually as thick as a few kilometers, from the major basins. Smaller (1-16-km-diameter) impact craters that penetrate this layered megaregolith and excavate material from depth have radar properties that provide insight into the variability of megaregolith thickness above a postulated basement of large crustal blocks. We observe a signifi cant difference in the population of radar-bright craters, 1-16 km and larger in diameter, between regions of the southeastern nearside highlands north and south of ∼lat 48°S. There are about one-third more radar-bright craters north of this line than to the south, broadly coincident with the mapped boundary between southern deposits mapped as pre-Nectarian age and those of Nectarian-Imbrian age to the north. The radar-bright crater population is consistent with a megaregolith thickness of ∼1.5 km in the north and ∼2.5 km in the south, a difference we attribute to South Pole-Aitken basin ejecta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antarctica's Lambert graben, Australia's North West Shelf, and the eastern Indian Peninsula all host thick, fault-bounded Permian-Triassic successions. These terranes were adjacent to each other in Gondwana. The Lambert graben intersects the modern coastline, strikes oblique to shelf architecture, and has a geophysical signature that can be traced >1000 km inland. Vitrinite reflectance data from the graben margins record Permian-Triassic infill. Australia's North West Shelf is the relict of an intracontinental Carboniferous-Permian rift that was infilled during the Permian-Triassic then driven to oceanic completion during Jurassic-Cretaceous Gondwana breakup. This rift was compartmentalized over length scales of ∼650 km, corresponding to accommodation zones, margin-normal geophysical lineaments, and long-lived crustal weaknesses. In eastern India, similar compartmentalization is marked by extensive coal-bearing graben systems. Gondwana reconstructions indicate that the Lambert graben corresponds to the orientation and length scale of Carboniferous-Permian rift compartmentalization. The Lambert graben represents an accommodation zone of a wide intracontinental rift that extended from Australia's North West Shelf, between India and Antarctica, to southern Africa. This rift collected Gondwana's thick Permian-Triassic sedimentary blanket and rich alluvial coal deposits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The West Antarctic rift system is one of the largest zones of continental extension on Earth. However, little is known of its crustal structure owing to the vast ice sheet that dominates the region. We report on new insights gained from a recent broadband seismic experiment. The 25-km-thick crust measured on the southern flank of the Marie Byrd Land dome suggests that the high topography there is partially supported by a low-density mantle, possibly a hotspot, whereas the interior of the rift appears to be underlain by average-density mantle, suggesting that active volcanism is not present beneath the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The fact that a crustal thickness of only 21 km was measured in the Bentley subglacial trench suggests that the region has undergone locally extreme extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]