Macquarie Island: A window into the oceanic crust and upper mantle

Dates provided in temporal coverage are approximate only, and represent the beginning and end date of the Macquarie Island season in 2002/2003. Because of the inaccessibility of the deep-ocean floor, our knowledge about the composition and structure of the oceanic crust is very limited. Macquarie Is...

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Bibliographic Details
Other Authors: AADC (originator), AU/AADC > Australian Antarctic Data Centre, Australia (resourceProvider)
Format: Dataset
Language:unknown
Published: Australian Ocean Data Network
Subjects:
geoscientificInformation
oceans
OCEAN CRUST DEFORMATION
EARTH SCIENCE
SOLID EARTH
GRAVITY/GRAVITATIONAL FIELD
CRUSTAL MOTION
MACQUARIE ISLAND
MID-OCEAN RIDGES
OCEANIC LITHOSPHERE
OPHIOLITES
SHEETED DYKES
AMD/AU
CEOS
AMD
OCEAN &gt
SOUTHERN OCEAN
SOUTHERN OCEAN &gt
GEOGRAPHIC REGION &gt
POLAR
Southern Ocean
Macquarie Island
Online Access:https://researchdata.ands.org.au/macquarie-island-window-upper-mantle/686210
https://data.aad.gov.au/metadata/records/ASAC_1208
https://secure3.aad.gov.au/proms/public/projects/report_project_public.cfm?project_no=1208
http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/portal/download_file.cfm?file_id=1861
http://data.aad.gov.au/aadc/metadata/citation.cfm?entry_id=ASAC_1208
Description
Summary:Dates provided in temporal coverage are approximate only, and represent the beginning and end date of the Macquarie Island season in 2002/2003. Because of the inaccessibility of the deep-ocean floor, our knowledge about the composition and structure of the oceanic crust is very limited. Macquarie Island is the only fragment of ocean crust exposed above sea-level in the world, providing a unique opportunity to study the ocean crust directly in unprecedented detail. From the abstract of the referenced paper: Macquarie Island preserves largely in-situ Miocene oceanic crust and mantle formed at a slow-spreading ridge. The crustal section on the island does not conform to a simple 'layer cake pseudo-stratigraphy', but is the result of multiple magmatic episodes. Macquarie Island crust did not grow by top-down cooling, but rather from the base up. Peridotites cooled first and formed the basement into which gabbro plutons were intruded. This was followed by cooling and deformation, and by intrusion of dykes that fed a sheeted dyke-basalt complex. Finally, lava filled grabens were formed. These relative age relations rule out simple co-genetic relations between rock units.

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