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A new approach to the separation of South America from West Antarctica

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Abstract

The relief and geophysical characteristics of the bottom in the Drake Passage-Scotia Sea belt have been studied and discussed relatively well in many publications. However, the tectonics and geodynamics of this belt lack a universally recognized interpretation. The ocean bottom is usually viewed as a collage of small fragments of the continental bridge and young oceanic plates formed as a result of spreading in the course of large-scale movements of huge lithospheric plates. The authors of this article propose an alternative hypothesis of the origin of the lithospheric belt of the Drake Passage and the Scotia Sea as an area of a large intercontinental bridge that underwent basification and destruction into large fragments under the conditions of moderate extension and short-term local riftogenesis.

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Authors
  1. G. B. Udintsev
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  2. N. A. Kurentsova
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  3. H. W. Schenke
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  4. V. G. Bakhmutov
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  5. V. D. Solov’ev
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Additional information

Original Russian Text © G.B. Udintsev, N.A. Kurentsova, H.W. Schenke, V.G. Bakhmutov, V.D. Solov’ev, 2012, published in Vestnik Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk, 2012, Vol. 82, No. 7, pp. 615–623.

RAS Corresponding Member Gleb Borisovich Udintsev works at the Vernadsky Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry, RAS. Natal’ya Alekseevna Kurentsova, Dr. Sci. (Geol.-Mineral.), is a senior researcher at the same institute. Prof. Hans Werner Schenke, Dr. Sci. (Geophys.), is an engineer at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research (Germany). Vladimir Georgievich Bakhmutov, Dr. Sci. (Geol.-Mineral.), is a department head at the Subbotin Institute of Geophysics, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Valerii Dmitrievich Solov’ev is a senior researcher at the same institute.

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Udintsev, G.B., Kurentsova, N.A., Schenke, H.W. et al. A new approach to the separation of South America from West Antarctica. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 82, 281–289 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331612040077

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