Tectonic evolution of the Tehuantepec Ridge UNAM岭的构造演化.pdfVIP

Earth and Planetary Science Letters 238 (2005) 64– 77 /locate/epsl Tectonic evolution of the Tehuantepec Ridge Marina Manea a,b,*, Vlad C. Manea a,b,*, Luca Ferrari c, Vladimir Kostoglodov a, William L. Bandy a a Instituto de Geofisica, UNAM, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico D.F., Mexico b Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA c Centro de Geociencias, UNAM, Campus Juriquilla, Qro., Mexico Received 21 October 2004; received in revised form 21 June 2005; accepted 28 June 2005 Available online 22 August 2005 Editor: Scott King Abstract The Tehuantepec Ridge is one of the most prominent lithospheric structures of the Cocos Plate, yet its tectonic evolution has remained poorly constrained until now. Calculated ocean floor ages and spreading rates, morphostructural analysis of the ridge and the surrounding ocean floor are used to infer the tectonic evolution and pattern of the Tehuantepec Ridge and associated structures. The ocean floor age estimates south of the Tehuantepec Ridge suggest an age of ~26 Ma at the Middle America trench. A mean age difference across the Tehuantepec Ridge of ~7 Ma suggests that the Tehuantepec Ridge would be formed as a long transform fault on the Guadalupe plate, prior to 15 Ma. The full-spreading rate estimates show that there might be a differential full-spreading rate across the transform fault between 15 and 5 Ma, when the oceanic plate just south of Clipperton Fracture Zone was decelerating between 15 a