Life of the Bellingshausen plate
The onset of independent Bellingshausen plate movement in the South Pacific is estimated at just after chron C33o. This event closely follows a change in the offset sense on the transform arm of the Late Cretaceous Pacific-Phoenix-Antarctic triple junction and accompanies the creation and/or lengthe...
| Published in: | Geophysical Research Letters |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Geophysical Union
2004
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/12154/ https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/12154/1/2003GL019127.pdf http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl0407/2003GL019127/index.html |
| Summary: | The onset of independent Bellingshausen plate movement in the South Pacific is estimated at just after chron C33o. This event closely follows a change in the offset sense on the transform arm of the Late Cretaceous Pacific-Phoenix-Antarctic triple junction and accompanies the creation and/or lengthening, by different mechanisms, of long-offsets on the Pacific-Antarctic ridge at the Udintsev, Tharp, Heezen and V transforms, as the triple junction stepped away from the ridge. At around chron C27, the Bellingshausen plate ceased to move independently and the Pacific-Antarctic ridge inherited the set of long offset transforms. Shortly afterwards, the gravity fabric on the flanks of much of the ridge displays evidence for a spreading rate decrease possibly related to transpression on the long-offset transforms. We speculate on a link between these events and regional tectonic changes around chron C27. |
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