3D Lithosphere structure of the Antarctic plate and its implications on the plate evolution

Since the 4th International Polar Year, international seismological communities deployed new seismographs across most of Antarctica, which resulted in that the seismic station coverage is strongly improved in the whole continent. Using thousands of fundamental-mode Rayleigh-wave dispersion curves retrieved from the observations of ~120 seismic stations in Antarctica, we constructed a 3-D S-wave velocity model for the lithosphere of the Antarctic plate using a single-step surface-wave tomographic method, and then inverted for upper-mantle temperatures using the velocities on the basis of thermoelastic properties of mantle minerals. The model shows interesting features of the Antarctica, especially for the broad E. Antarctica. For example, the thickest crust in the Antarctica is beneath GSM, and the thickness is similar to that of a present orogen. However, the lithospheric thicknesses of the whole E. Antarctica is similar to a present craton, and the thickest lithosphere locates in the middle way from Dome A to Dome C. The features may imply that the crust beneath the core of E. Antarctica have a longest stable time in the Earth. If so, the bedrock surface topography of E. Antarctica can be primarily taken as the incised work by ices on the hard rocks.