RESUMEN
The preservation, age, and stratigraphic relation of an in situ ashfall layer with an underlying desert pavement in Arena Valley, southern Victoria Land, indicate that a cold-desert climate has persisted in Arena Valley during the past 4.3 million years. These data indicate that the present East Antarctic Ice Sheet has endured for this time and that average temperatures during the Pliocene in Arena Valley were no greater than 3 degrees C above present values. One implication is that the collapse of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet due to greenhouse warming is unlikely, even if global atmospheric temperatures rise to levels last experienced during mid-Pliocene times.
RESUMEN
The South Tibetan detachment system separates the high-grade metamorphic core of the Himalayan orogen from its weakly metamorphosed suprastructure. It is thought to have developed in response to differences in gravitational potential energy produced by crustal thickening across the mountain front. Geochronologic data from the Rongbuk Valley, north of Qomolangma (Mount Everest) in southern Tibet, demonstrate that at least one segment of the detachment system was active between 19 and 22 million years ago, an interval characterized by large-scale crustal thickening at lower structural levels. These data suggest that decoupling between an extending upper crust and a converging lower crust was an important aspect of Himalayan tectonics in Miocene time.