The Lithosphere

Transantarctic Mountains Tectonics

Principle Investigator: Nick Mortimer
Organisation: GNS Science

What we do: investigate possible major fault lines along the Transantarctic Mountains. In the field we check that these lines really are faults, find out which way they have moved, and collect nearby rock samples. After a field season we do radiometric dating of rock samples to help establish when the faults moved.

Why we do it: to improve understanding of how, when and why the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM, one of the world’s largest ranges) came to be there are there, and to connect their geological evolution with that of the Ross Sea, Southern Ocean and New Zealand.

Some things we’ve found so far: in three field seasons over eight years we have found that many of the more obvious onland faults in Victoria Land are actually much older than the uplift of the range. This suggests that either the big faults must be offshore and/or the range mainly came up without fault control.

Recent Publications
Calvert, A.T., Mortimer, N. 2003. Thermal history of Transantarctic Mountains K-feldspars, Southern Victoria Land.Terra Antartica, 10(1): 3-15.

Mortimer, N., Forsyth, P.J., Turnbull, I.M. 2002. Reassessment of faults in the Wilson Piedmont Glacier area : implications for age and style of Transantarctic Mountains uplift. pp. 207-213. In: Gamble, J.A., Skinner, D.N.B., Henrys, S.A. (eds) Antarctica at the close of a millennium: proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Antarctic Earth Sciences, Wellington, 1999. Wellington: Royal Society of New Zealand. Bulletin / Royal Society of New Zealand 35.