Buried fan-shaped basin beneath East Antarctica hints at Gondwana breakup scars
Scientists mapped a giant, fan-shaped set of basins beneath East Antarctica using sub-ice topography, gravity, magnetic and seismic data, suggesting a cohesive tectonic province formed by distributed rotational extension before Gondwana split. The proposed East Antarctic Fan-Shaped Basin Province may represent a continent-scale scar that helped guide the Antarctica–Australia separation and influence ice-flow patterns, though the timing and full implications remain uncertain and require further testing.