Geologic Studies in the Shackleton Range Coats Land, and Dronning Maud Land, East Antarctica: A North American Connection

有人认为，南极东部和北美前寒武纪克拉通的太平洋边缘以前是并列的，它们在新元古代超大陆的分裂过程中分离开来，形成了太平洋。支持这一假设的最关键和最直接的可检验的证据是，北美克拉通格伦维尔造山带的西北边界，格伦维尔锋面，在沙克尔顿山脉和海岸地之间的威德尔海的头部延伸到南极洲东部，这个地区很少被美国地质学家访问，也从未被详细研究过。该奖项支持对该假设进行初步检验，即对南极岩石进行地质、地球化学、地质年代学和古地磁研究，以便将它们与美国西南部格伦维尔锋面附近的岩石进行比较。这项工作将包括对南极大陆唯一未受干扰的新元古代沉积序列的详细地层学研究。

It has been suggested that the Pacific margins of the East Antarctic and North American Precambrian cratons were formerly juxtaposed, and that they drifted apart to initiate the Pacific Ocean during the fragmentation of a Neoproterozoic supercontinent. The most critical and immediate testable evidence put forward in support of this hypothesis is the apparent continuation of the northwestern boundary of the Grenville orogen of the North American craton, the Grenville front, into East Antarctica at the head of the Weddell Sea between the Shackleton Range and Coasts Land, an area seldom visited and never studied in detail by American geologists. This award supports an initial test of the hypothesis, a geologic, geochemical, geochronometric, and paleomagnetic study of the Antarctic rocks in question, in order to compare them with those adjacent to the Grenville front in the southwestern United States. The work will include detailed stratigraphic study of the only undisturbed Neoproterozoic sedimentary sequence in the Antarctic continent.