A reconnaissance survey of multibeam bathymetry and magnetic anomaly data of the Menard Fracture Zone allows for significant refinement of plate motion history of the South Pacific over the last 44 million years. The right‐stepping Menard Fracture Zone developed at the northern end of the Pacific‐Antarctic Ridge within a propagating rift system that generated the Hudson microplate and formed the conjugate Henry and Hudson Troughs as a response to a major plate reorganization ∼45 million years ago. Two splays, originally about 30 to 35 km apart, narrowed gradually to a corridor of 5 to 10 km width, while lineation azimuths experienced an 8° counterclockwise reorientation owing to changes in spreading direction between chrons C13o and C6C (33 to 24 million years ago). We use the improved Pacific‐Antarctic plate motions to analyze the development of the southwest end of the Pacific‐Antarctic Ridge. Owing to a 45° counterclockwise reorientation between chrons C27 and C20 (61 to 44 million years ago) this section of the ridge became a long transform fault connected to the Macquarie Triple Junction. Following a clockwise change starting around chron C13o (33 million years ago), the transform fault opened. A counterclockwise change starting around chron C10y (28 millions years ago) again led to a long transform fault between chrons C6C and C5y (24 to 10 million years ago). A second period of clockwise reorientation starting around chron C5y (10 million years ago) put the transform fault into extension, forming an array of 15 en echelon transform faults and short linking spreading centers.
[1] Nearly complete coverage of shipboard multibeam bathymetry data at the right-stepping Menard and Pitman Fracture Zones allowed us to map abyssal hill deviations along their traces. In this study we distinguish between (1) J-shaped curvatures at their origin, where modeling is addressing primary volcanism and faulting following a curved zone, and (2) straight abyssal hills getting bent in anti-J-shaped curvatures, in response to increased coupling across the transform fault, after they were formed. We compared the mapped abyssal hill deflections to a detailed plate motion model for the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge to test how abyssal hill curvature correlates to changes in plate motion direction, which lead to periods of transtension or transpression. This test was based on the number and size of the abyssal hill deflections. The observations show a high abundance of J-shaped abyssal hills during periods of significant clockwise change in plate motion direction, which leads to transtension. The tip of the ridge axis can deflect up to 60°into the transform fault in response to changes in the stress field at ridge-transform intersections. This is observed, in particular, at the Pitman Fracture Zone, where there has been a ∼15°clockwise rotation of the spreading direction azimuth during the last 9 Myr. In addition, we observed anti-J-shaped curvatures at Menard, Pitman, and Heirtzler Fracture Zones during periods of transpression when increased coupling across an oceanic transform fault is partially accommodated by distributed strike-slip deformation rather than solely by discontinuous displacement at the transform fault. Anti-J-shaped deflections typically develop in seafloor less than 2 Myr old when the oceanic lithosphere is thin.
Adam and Vidal (Reports, 2 April 2010, p. 83) reported sea-floor depth increasing as the square root of distance from the ridge along “mantle flow lines.” However, their data actually support a depth-age relationship and “flattening” at older ages. We argue that no plausible physical mechanism supports their proposal that mantle flow drives subsidence.
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