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Plate tectonics

The Antarctic connection

Richard G. Gordon
oday, Antarctica seems to be part of a
single tectonic plate. But there is clear
palaeomagnetic evidence that, in the
past, there has been a large relative rotation
between different parts of the continent1. A
central issue has been how much, if any, of
this motion has occurred during the past 80
million years or so. Cande et al.2 (page 145 of
this issue) now present data that reveal an
extinct plate-tectonic boundary between the
two parts of Antarctica, East and West, thereby enabling them to estimate that motion.
East Antarctica is the larger and has been a
stable part of a nearly rigid plate for hundreds of millions of years. West Antarctica,
by contrast, is probably an amalgamation of
many smaller pieces that were assembled in
the past few hundred million years. The significance of Cande and colleagues study
goes well beyond Antarctica, however,
because motion in Antarctica is a central
element in reconstructing plate-tectonic
motions around the globe.
To understand the evolution of the plate
margins surrounding the Pacific Ocean, one
would like to know the displacement history
of the plates of the Pacific basin relative to
the surrounding continental plates. During
seafloor spreading the polarity of the geomagnetic field, which reverses on average
every half million years or so, is locked into
newly created and cooling crust, thus preserving a record of the history of relative
motion of the sea floor flanking a mid-ocean
ridge. Processes at converging plate boundaries, however, leave no useful record for estimating the relative plate motions that have
occurred across them. To estimate the
motion across such boundaries, a so-called
plate-motion circuit through a series of
mid-ocean ridges is needed.
The present circum-Pacific margin has
only one very small segment of mid-ocean
ridge, in the Gulf of California along the
coast of Mexico, and it has existed for only a
few million years. So, to estimate the motion
between Pacific-basin plates and the surrounding continental plates for any time
except the past few million years, a platemotion circuit must be constructed through
mid-ocean ridges3.
Figure 1 illustrates a set of such platemotion circuits. It shows the central role of
the Antarctic plate, which is nearly surrounded by mid-ocean ridges. To estimate
the motion of the Pacific plate relative to the
North American plate, for example, the relevant circuit is the Pacific plate to the Antarctic plate (via the PacificAntarctic Rise) to
the African plate (via the Southwest Indian

NATURE | VOL 404 | 9 MARCH 2000 | www.nature.com

Ridge) to the North American plate (via the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge), with the relative
motion between each of these plate pairs
being summed. Similarly, the circuit must
pass through Antarctica to estimate the
motion between any Pacific-basin plate and
any of the surrounding continental plates
North America, South America, Eurasia or
Australia. These plate-motion circuits can be
used, at most, for the past 80 million years,
the time during which the PacificAntarctic
Rise has existed.
These same plate-motion circuits are the
main yardsticks that one has for estimating
the relative motion between the hotspots in
the Pacific Ocean and those in the Atlantic
and Indian oceans. Hotspots are long-lived
sources of volcanism, such as that which is
now active at Kilauea volcano in the Hawaiian islands. Hotspots are thought to be the
surface manifestations of plumes rising from
deep in the mantle. As a plate moves relative
to a plume beneath it, a trail of extinct volcanoes, such as the HawaiianEmperor island
and seamount chain, is created.
The original plate reconstructions for the
south Pacific, Antarctica, Australia and New
Zealand, published in 1975, implied that
about 500 km of motion was required
between East and West Antarctica since
about 80 million years ago4. Estimates of the
past motions of Pacific-basin plates relative

to the circum-Pacific plates showed that

these reconstructions are extremely sensitive
to assumed motion between East and West
Antarctica5.
Furthermore, two approaches for estimating the northward motion of the Pacific
plate relative to Earths spin axis have produced estimates that disagree; motion
between East and West Antarctica might
partly explain this disagreement6. In the first
approach, the northward motion is estimated directly from Pacific plate palaeomagnetic data, which record the ancient timeaveraged direction of Earths magnetic field.
The time-averaged inclination, which is the
angle that the magnetic field makes with the
horizontal, varies in a predictable way
with palaeolatitude, from which northward
motion can be inferred. In the second
approach, the amount of northward motion
of the Pacific plate is inferred from palaeomagnetic data reconstructed from other
plates through the global circuit through
Antarctica, assuming that Antarctica is a single plate6.
There also has long been a large misfit
between observed and hypothetical Pacific
hotspots tracks predicted in a reference
frame fixed to Atlantic and Indian Ocean
hotspots. One explanation7 for the misfit is
substantial motion between Pacific and nonPacific hotspots. A second explanation8,9 is
that the hotspots in the Pacific are fixed relative to non-Pacific hotspots, and that motion
between East Antarctica and West Antarctica
causes the misfit.
Since 1975, new data and interpretations have reduced the size of the platereconstruction misfits that required motion

Gr

NA
Eu

Ku

In
SA

Fa

Af

Pa

Au
WAn

EAn

Figure 1 Global plate-motion circuits for much of the past 80 million years. The double-headed
arrows point to pairs of plates separated by a mid-ocean ridge from which the relative plate motion of
the plate pair can be determined. For example, the motion of the Kula plate relative to the North
American plate is determined by the plate-motion circuit Kula (Ku) to Pacific (Pa) to West Antarctic
(WAn) to East Antarctic (EAn) to Africa (Af) to North America (NA). Au, Australia; Eu, Eurasia; Fa,
Farallon; Gr, Greenland; In, India; SA, South America. (Redrawn from refs 6, 12.)
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139

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Figure 2 Topography of the north Pacific sea floor, showing the elbow where the Hawaiian island and
seamount chain meets the Emperor seamount chain. (Map reproduced from ref. 13, courtesy of
Walter H. F. Smith.)

between East and West Antarctica. Some

workers have gone so far as to assert that
there has been no such motion during the
past 80 million years. Much of the ambiguity
has been due to a lack of essential geophysical
data from high-latitude regions, which are
difficult to survey because of the presence of
sea ice.
Cande et al.2 have produced such data
from marine geophysical surveys north of
the Ross Sea and in the South Tasman Sea
(see Figs 1 and 2 of the paper on pages 145
and 146). These data allow them to directly
estimate motion between East and West
Antarctica. They have discovered an extinct
spreading centre north of the western Ross
Sea embayment, which is flanked by a set of
linear magnetic anomalies that formed
between 43 and 26 million years ago. These
anomalies indicate a spreading rate of some
12 mm per year, about the same rate as the
slowest rates of seafloor spreading observed
today.
Cande et al. combine these and other data
to show that there was about 180 km of separation in the western Ross Sea embayment,
and hence 180 km of motion between East
and West Antarctica, between 43 and 26 million years ago. This work not only places firm
bounds on how much motion could have
occurred between East and West Antarctica;
it also for the first time permits rigorous estimates of this motion to be incorporated into the global plate-motion circuit
and into estimates of the motion of Pacific
hotspots relative to non-Pacific hotspots.
The results bear directly on the question
of the origin of the elbow in the HawaiianEmperor chain in the north Pacific
(Fig 2). Ages along the chain, which record
the motion of the Pacific plate relative to the
Hawaiian hotspot, increase monotonically
to the northwest from zero (that is, active
volcanism) at its southeast end (for example
Kilauea on the big island of Hawaii) to about
80 million years near where it intersects the
Aleutian trench. The chain consists mainly
of two nearly straight segments, the older
north-northwest-striking Emperor segment
with ages from about 80 to 43 million years,
and the younger west-northwest-striking
140

Hawaiian segment with ages less than 43 million years. These two straight segments meet
at an angle of about 120 in an elbow, which
is widely, but not universally, interpreted as
recording a 60 change at 43 million years
ago in the direction of Pacific plate motion
relative to the Hawaiian and other Pacific
plumes.
Reconstructions10 of the Pacific plate relative to Atlantic and Indian Ocean hotspots
that use Cande and colleagues estimates
indicate no sharp change in motion of the
Pacific plate relative to the Atlantic and Indian Ocean hotspots at about 43 million years
ago. If so, it implies that there was a sharp and
sudden change in the motion of Pacific
hotspots relative to those in other ocean
basins, which is difficult to understand in
view of what is known about convection in
Earths mantle11.
In any event, the new work of Cande et al.
constitutes great progress. It will have a
pivotal influence on the future course of
research on global tectonics.

Richard G. Gordon is at the Department of Geology

and Geophysics, University of California, Berkeley,
California 94720-4767, USA, on sabbatical leave
from the Department of Geology and Geophysics,
Rice University.
e-mail: rgg@rice.edu
1. Luyendyk, B. et al. Tectonics 15, 122141 (1996).
2. Cande, S. C., Stock, J. M., Mller, D. & Ishihara, T. Nature 404,
145150 (2000).
3. Atwater, T. & Molnar, P. in Proceedings of Conference on Tectonic
Problems of San Andreas Fault System (eds Kovach, R. L. & Nur,
A.) 136148 (Stanford Univ. Publ. Geol. Sci., 1973).
4. Molnar, P., Atwater, T., Mammerickx, J. & Smith, S. M. Geophys.
J. R. Astron. Soc. 40, 383420 (1975).
5. Jurdy, D. M. J. Geophys. Res. 84, 67966802 (1979).
6. Acton, G. D. & Gordon, R. G. Science 263, 12461254 (1994).
7. Molnar, P. & Stock, J. Nature 327, 587591 (1987).
8. Morgan, W. J. in Oceanic Lithosphere (The Sea, Vol. 7) (ed.
Emiliani, C.) 443487 (Wiley, New York, 1981).
9. Duncan, R. A. Tectonophysics 74, 2942 (1981).
10. Raymond, C. A., Stock, J. M. & Cande, S. C. in History and
Dynamics of Global Plate Motions (eds Richards, M., Gordon,
R. G. & van der Hilst, R. D.) (Am. Geophys. Un., Washington
DC, in the press).
11. Bercovici, D., Ricard, Y. & Richards, M. in History and
Dynamics of Global Plate Motions (eds Richards, M., Gordon,
R. G. & van der Hilst, R. D.) (Am. Geophys. Un., Washington
DC, in the press).
12. Engebretson, D. C., Cox, A. & Gordon, R. G. Geol. Soc. Am.
Spec. Pap. 206 (1985).
13. http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/mgg/announcements/
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