Comment on "Major Australian-Antarctic plate reorganization at Hawaiian-Emperor bend time".
نویسندگان
چکیده
Whittaker et al. (Reports, 5 October 2007, p. 83) presented reconstructions for Australia and Antarctica showing a change in relative plate motion approximately 53 million years ago, coincident with an inferred major global plate reorganization. This comment addresses problematic areas in their assumptions and the geological consequences of their reconstructions.
منابع مشابه
Major Australian-Antarctic plate reorganization at Hawaiian-Emperor bend time.
A marked bend in the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain supposedly resulted from a recent major reorganization of the plate-mantle system there 50 million years ago. Although alternative mantle-driven and plate-shifting hypotheses have been proposed, no contemporaneous circum-Pacific plate events have been identified. We report reconstructions for Australia and Antarctica that reveal a major plate...
متن کامل50-Ma initiation of Hawaiian-Emperor bend records major change in Pacific plate motion.
The Hawaiian-Emperor bend has played a prominent yet controversial role in deciphering past Pacific plate motions and the tempo of plate motion change. New ages for volcanoes of the central and southern Emperor chain define large changes in volcanic migration rate with little associated change in the chain's trend, which suggests that the bend did not form by slowing of the Hawaiian hot spot. I...
متن کاملPacific plate motion change caused the Hawaiian-Emperor Bend
A conspicuous 60° bend of the Hawaiian-Emperor Chain in the north-western Pacific Ocean has variously been interpreted as the result of an abrupt Pacific plate motion change in the Eocene (∼47 Ma), a rapid southward drift of the Hawaiian hotspot before the formation of the bend, or a combination of these two causes. Palaeomagnetic data from the Emperor Seamounts prove ambiguous for constraining...
متن کاملIntraoceanic subduction spanned the Pacific in the Late Cretaceous–Paleocene
The notorious ~60° bend separating the Hawaiian and Emperor chains marked a prominent change in the motion of the Pacific plate at ~47 Ma (million years ago), but the origin of that change remains an outstanding controversy that bears on the nature of major plate reorganizations. Lesser known but equally significant is a conundrum posed by the pre-bend (~80 to 47 Ma) motion of the Pacific plate...
متن کاملIs the Origin of Hawaii as Fixed as its Plume
In 2002, paleolatitude data led researchers from the Ocean Drilling Program to investigate whether the Hawaiian Emperor Bend resulted from a moving hotspot and/or true polar wander as opposed to forming solely as a result of plate movement. In 1963 J. Tuzo Wilson had proposed that the bend was caused by a change in direction of plate movement over the hotspot. With new findings and more extensi...
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عنوان ژورنال:
- Science
دوره 321 5888 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 2008