View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Electronic Publication Information Center Article Geochemistry 3 Volume 5, Number 7 Geophysics 10 July 2004 Q07002, doi:10.1029/2003GC000657 GeosystemsG G ISSN: 1525-2027 AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF THE EARTH SCIENCES Published by AGU and the Geochemical Society High-resolution animated tectonic reconstruction of the South Pacific and West Antarctic Margin Graeme Eagles and Karsten Gohl Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Postfach 120161, D-27515 Bremerhaven, Germany (
[email protected]) Robert D. Larter British Antarctic Survey, High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge, CB3 0ET, UK [1] An animated reconstruction shows South Pacific plate kinematics between 90 and 45 Ma, using the satellite-derived gravity anomaly field, interpolated isochrons and plate rotation parameters from both published and new work on marine geophysical data. The Great South Basin and Bounty Trough, New Zealand, are shown as the earliest Pacific–Antarctic plate boundary that opened before 83 Ma. The earliest true Pacific–Antarctic seafloor formed within the eastern parts of this boundary, but later and farther west, seafloor formed within its Antarctic flank. After 80 Ma, the Bellingshausen plate converged with an oceanic part of the Antarctic plate to its east, while its motion simultaneously caused rifting in continental Antarctica to the south. The Pacific–Bellingshausen spreading center developed a set of long offset transform faults that the Pacific–Antarctic plate boundary inherited around chron C27 when the Bellingshausen plate ceased to move independently as part of a Pacific- wide plate tectonic reorganization event.