Abstract
Few of the Earth's regions remain unmapped, but some inhospitable areas near the poles are poorly charted. The dense, permanent ice offshore West Antarctica has prevented research vessels from examining clues left by seafloor spreading during the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwanaland 180 million years ago. As a result, exactly how the giant continent broke into its puzzle pieces has remained a mystery.Long‐hidden tectonic secrets have now been unlocked by satellite radar altimeter data, which has traditionally been useless where pack ice was present. Applying new analysis techniques to altimeter data collected by the European Space Agency's ERS‐1 satellite, Seymour Laxon of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory in Surrey, England, and David McAdoo, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, produced detailed topographic maps of the polar regions that reveal the prehistoric path of tectonic plates. Three years ago, they applied their technique to data over the Arctic Ocean and discovered a previously unmapped spreading ridge in the ocean basin north of Canada.
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