East Antarctic Shield

Map of East and West Antarctica
Figure 1. Map of East and West Antarctica separated by the Transantarctic Mountain Range

The East Antarctic Shield or Craton is a cratonic rock body that covers 10.2 million square kilometers or roughly 73% of the continent of Antarctica.[1] The shield is almost entirely buried by the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that has an average thickness of 2200 meters but reaches up to 4700 meters in some locations. East Antarctica is separated from West Antarctica by the 100–300 kilometer wide Transantarctic Mountains, which span nearly 3,500 kilometers from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea.[2] The East Antarctic Shield is then divided into an extensive central craton (Mawson craton) that occupies most of the continental interior and various other marginal cratons that are exposed along the coast.

  1. ^ Drewry, David J. (November 1976). "Sedimentary basins of the east antarctic craton from geophysical evidence". Tectonophysics. 36 (1–3): 301–314. Bibcode:1976Tectp..36..301J. doi:10.1016/0040-1951(76)90023-8.
  2. ^ Torsvik, T. H.; Gaina, C.; Redfield, T. F. (2008). "Antarctica and Global Paleogeography: From Rodinia, Through Gondwanaland and Pangea, to the Birth of the Southern Ocean and the Opening of Gateways". Antarctica: A Keystone in a Changing World. pp. 125–140. doi:10.17226/12168. ISBN 978-0-309-11854-5.