Late Paleozoic Ice Age glaciers shaped East Antarctica landscape

Abstract

The erosion history of Antarctica is fundamental to our understanding of interlinks between climate and glacier dynamics. However, because of the vast polar ice sheet covering more than 99% of Antarctica land mass, the continental surface response to glacial erosion remains largely unknown. Over the last decade the subglacial topography of Antarctica has been imaged by airborne radar surveys. These studies revealed high and complex sub-glacial relief in the core of the East Antarctic shield, interpreted as resulting from rifting episodes and low long-term erosion rates, or repeated large-scale glacial retreats and advances. In East Antarctica, thermochronology studies have revealed a spatially localized Cenozoic erosion starting after 34 Ma, with a maximum denudation of 2 km in the Lambert Trough. Low pre-glacial erosion rates before 34 Ma have been inferred since the Permian period, following a phase of significant (>2 km) erosion during the Late Paleozoic between 350 and 250 Ma. However, the exact extent, magnitude and significance of this Late-Paleozoic erosion phase remain elusive. Here we show that homogeneous exhumation occurred at the scale of the Terre Adélie margin of East Antarctica in response to major glacial erosion during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age (LPIA). Our data require homogeneous exhumation and >4 km erosion between 340 and 300 Ma, along a 600-km profile along the Terre Adélie–George V Land coast. The data are inconsistent with either exhumation during Permian rifting, or with significant (>1.5 km) Cenozoic glacial erosion, which requires LPIA glaciers to have been temperate, promoting glacial sliding, erosion and sediment transfer, even at high latitudes, unlike in the present situation.