Astrid Ridge
The ocean along the continental margin of Dronning Maud Land, the Riiser-Larsen and Lazarev seas, are dominated by three topographic features: Astrid Ridge, Maud Rise, a large volcanic plateau in the Lazarev Sea (3°E, 65°S), and Gunnerus Ridge (33.5°E), probably underlain by continental crust.
Astrid Ridge, extending from 65°S to the Antarctic margin and located between 9°E and 17°E, forms the eastern border of the Lazarev Sea and the western border of the Riiser-Larsen Sea. It is divided into two parts by the Astrid Fracture Zone: south of 67°S Astrid Ridge stretches N-S while the northern part follows the SW—NE direction of the fracture zone.
The geological evolution of the Astrid Ridge remains enigmatic. The Riiser-Larsen Sea is a conjugate basin to the Mozambique Basin (in the ocean east of southern Africa) and the two once formed the first ocean to open during the break-up of Gondwana. Astrid Ridge is a large volcanic features closely related to this 160 Ma break-up during which oceanic crust began to form in the Riiser-Larsen Sea. West of Astrid Ridge, however, neither oceanic crust nor magnetic anomalies have been found and this area is therefore interpreted as stretched continental crust and Astrid Ridge as a former continental margin created by volcanism during the break-up.
References
- Notes
- ^ This article incorporates public domain material from "Astrid Ridge". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey.
- ^ Leinweber & Jokat 2012, Introduction, pp. 87–89
- ^ Jokat et al. 2003, pp. 12–13
- Sources
- Jokat, W.; Boebel, T.; König, M.; Meyer, U. (2003). "Timing and geometry of early Gondwana breakup". Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. 108 (B9): 2428. Bibcode:2003JGRB..108.2428J. doi:10.1029/2002jb001802. Retrieved 13 August 2016.
- Leinweber, V. T.; Jokat, W. (2012). "The Jurassic history of the Africa–Antarctica corridor—new constraints from magnetic data on the conjugate continental margins". Tectonophysics. 530: 87–101. Bibcode:2012Tectp.530...87L. doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2011.11.008.