Ancient Basin Network Discovered Beneath East Antarctica
Scientists have identified a continent-scale network of buried basins beneath East Antarctica, linking major subglacial features like Wilkes Basin, Aurora Basin, and the Lake Vostok basin into a single fan-shaped system called the East Antarctic Fan-shaped Basin Province. Formed by distributed rotational extension in the crust, this structure offers new clues about Gondwana tectonics and may influence ice dynamics, subglacial lake locations, and the stability of vulnerable parts of the Antarctic Ice Sheet as the climate changes. The team combined topography, gravity, magnetic, seismic data, and rebound modeling to reconstruct the landscape beneath the ice.