Abstract
The Ford Ranges and the Edward VII Peninsula, western Marie Byrd Land (MBL), form the flat eastern rift flank of the West Antarctic Rift System (WARS). Both areas were intruded by middle and late Cretaceous Byrd Coast Granites and experienced three distinct periods of low temperature cooling: from 100 to 85 Ma, from 75 to 60 Ma and since the Oligocene. The different cooling stages are related to a pulsing mantle plume, slowly wandering below MBL. They can be linked to the beginning of Gondwana break-up in the Pacific sector of Antarctica, the rifting of the New Zealand/ Campbell Plateau block from MBL and the onset of the Tertiary alkali volcanism in West Antarctica. The cumulative amount of uplift/ denudation since the late Cretaceous is ~3300 m and thus, significantly smaller than those of the western rift shoulder of the WARS (Transantarctic Mountains: up to 10 km).
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