Pacific–Antarctic Ridge


The Pacific-Antarctic Ridge is a divergent tectonic plate boundary located on the seafloor of the South Pacific Ocean, separating the Pacific plate from the Antarctic plate. It is regarded as the southern section of the East Pacific Rise in some usages, generally south of the Challenger fracture zone which is associated with a triple junction between the Juan Fernández microplate, the Pacific plate and the Antarctic plate. It stretches from there in a general southwesterly direction to the Macquarie Triple Junction south of New Zealand.

Tectonics

The divergence rate between the two plates along the ridge is believed to vary from about near 65°S to near the Udintsev fracture zone at 55°S. This area of transition in sea floor spreading rate has been mapped by multiple techniques and occurs near the Heirtzler fracture zone.
The ridge is related to the Late Cretaceous breakup of Gondwana. To the southeast the historic Bellingshausen plate separated the Pacific and Antarctic plates between about 84 to 61 million years ago. Until about 33 million years ago, the Proto-Antipodes fracture zone well to the south separated two independent spreading centers, now merged, being the Antarctic–Pacific Ridge and that of the Antarctic–Campbell Plateau.

Fracture zones

Fracture zones are generally areas of low gravity on the seafloor parallel to a spreading center. The named fracture zones going southwest along the rise, include:

The Louisville Ridge

Stretching for north-west from the Eltanin fault system which intersects the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge to the Osbourn Seamount at Tonga and Kermadec Junction is a long line of seamounts called the Louisville Ridge – the longest such chain in the Pacific – thought to have formed from the Pacific Plate sliding over a long-lived center of upwelling magma called the Louisville hotspot.