Reassembling Gondwana: A new high quality constraint from vibroseis exploration of the sub-ice shelf geology of the East Antarctic continental margin

The breakup of Gondwana is manifested by coeval early Jurassic Karoo magmatism in South Africa and East Antarctica. In South Africa, the large volumes of volcanic rocks of the adjoining Lebombo and Mwenetzi-Save monoclines represent a volcanic rift margin, and in East Antarctica, a corresponding fea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth
Main Authors: Kristoffersen, Yngve, Hofstede, Coen, Diez, Anja, Blenkner, Richard, Lambrecht, Astrid, Mayer, Christoph, Eisen, Olaf
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Wiley 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/37406/
https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/37406/1/Kristoffersen2014_gondwana_vibro.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014JB011479/abstract
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.45069
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.45069.d001
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Summary:The breakup of Gondwana is manifested by coeval early Jurassic Karoo magmatism in South Africa and East Antarctica. In South Africa, the large volumes of volcanic rocks of the adjoining Lebombo and Mwenetzi-Save monoclines represent a volcanic rift margin, and in East Antarctica, a corresponding feature, the Explora Wedge is buried below sediments and floating ice shelves on the continental margin of Dronning Maud Land. We use the seismic vibrator source to explore the sub-ice geology in Antarctica, and the new seismic reflection and available regional aeromagnetic data enable us to outline a dogleg landward extent of the Explora Wedge in Dronning Maud Land. The congruent inboard wedge geometries on the two continents define a high quality constraint, which facilitate for the first time, a geologically consistent and tight reconstruction of Africa relative to East Antarctica within Gondwana. The uncertainties in correlations of major geological features (mobile belts) from one continent to the other may now be of the order of ten’s of kilometers rather than hundreds of kilometers.