Are there any hotspots Antarctica?
Victor Twu
Hi yet again Victor,
Hotspots in Antarctica---there's a complicated question. The tectonics of
Antarctica are not that well understood. There are a few linear chains of
volcanoes but as pointed out in "Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and
Southern Oceans" by WE LeMasurier and JW Thomson, there are not age dates
available to tell if these are hotspot chains. However, other
evidence has shown that that the Antarctic plate hasn't moved very much
over the past 80 million years, so you might not expect to see linear
hotspot chains. Most of the volcanism on the actual continent itself
seems to be related to a large continental rift called the West Antarctic
Rift. There are some hotspot island volcanoes on the Antarctic plate, but
they are not on the continent itself.
Sincerely,
Scott Rowland
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