Abstract The East Antarctic Shield consists of a variety of Archaean and Proterozoic–Cambrian high-grade terranes that have distinct crustal histories and were amalgamated at various times in the Precambrian-Cambrian. High-grade Pan-African tectonism at 600–500Ma is recognized from four distinct belts: the Dronning Maud Land, Lützow-Holm Bay, Prydz Bay and Denman Glacier Belts. These high-grade belts juxtapose distinct Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic crustal provinces (Maud, Rayner and Wilkes), the Rauer Terrane, and have also marginally affected Archaean cratonic remnants in the Napier Complex and southern Prince Charles Mountains. The Wilkes Province experienced its principal tectonothermal events prior to 1130Ma and was not affected by the younger events that characterize the Maud Province (1150 and 1030–990Ma), the Rayner Province (990–920Ma) and the Rauer Terrane (1030–990Ma). These differences between the isotopic/event records of the basement provinces now separated by the Pan-African belts require that the older provinces were not formerly parts of a continuous ‘Grenville’ belt as proposed in the SW US-East Antartic model. East Antarctica was not a single unified crustal block within either East Gondwana or Rodinia until the Cambrian, which is now demonstrated to be the key phase of high-grade and ultrahigh-temperature (UHT) metamorphism associated with supercontinent assembly. The high-grade Pan-African tectonism is characterized by extensive infracrustal melting, clock-wise P–T paths, rapid post-peak exhumation along isothermal decompression paths to shallow- or mid-crustal levels by 500 Ma and the generation, at least locally, of UHT conditions. A significant flux of heat from the mantle into the deep and initially overthickened crust is required to produce these observed metamorphic effects. Whilst the thermal evolution can be explained by models that invoke the removal of most of the lithospheric mantle following crustal thickening and prior to rapid extension of the remaining crust, these one-dimensional models are inconsistent with present crustal thicknesses of 25–35km in the Pan-African domains of the East Antarctic Shield.

Abstract Even the earliest ships to visit North America were equipped with lead lines for sounding shoals and coming to anchor as indicated by de Champlain’s detailed sounding charts of the harbors at Plymouth, Gloucester, and Chatham made in 1605 and 1607 (Howe, 1943, p. 112, 126, 136). After the region was settled, the growing fishing and shipping industry’s need for published charts led the United States Congress to establish the Survey of the Coast under the direction of F. R. Hassler (Wraight and Roberts, 1957). In 1835 the survey published its first sounding chart—one for the New York area. By 1843, about 30,000 sq km of the inner part of the continental shelf had been sounded. A. D. Bache succeeded Hassler and greatly expanded the operations of the bureau, which in 1878 was renamed the Coast and Geodetic Survey (now part of the Environmental Science Services Administration). A parallel bureau within the Navy Department was organized in 1830 to compile charts for deep water and foreign coasts (U.S. Navy Oceanographic Office, 1967). The first director of this Depot of Charts and Instruments was Lt. Charles Wilkes. In 1842, Lt. M. F. Maury succeeded Wilkes and expanded functions so that, in 1866, the depot became the Navy Hydrographic Office (now the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office). By the 1870s the major physiographic features of the shallow part of the continental margin were known. The edge of the shelf was found to be about 200 m deep and far from the shoreline.