We suggest that the migration of volcanism occurred from the Late Cretaceous until the early Eocene. However, this spatial age trend is disrupted by the presence of Eocene magmatism in Livingston Island, located in the centre of the archipelago. The lithostratigraphical correlation also shows a broad geographical trend of decreasing age of volcanism from southwest to northeast, which has been previously suggested. The lithostratigraphical correlation shows that the geological and environmental evolution comprises three main stages: 1) deep marine sedimentation from ∼164 to 140 Ma, 2) subaerial volcanism and sedimentation with a proliferation of plants and fauna from ∼140 to 35 Ma and 3) glacial and interglacial deposits from ∼35 Ma. We present herein a review of the literature available in the South Shetland Islands, which we use to propose a lithostratigraphical correlation that constitutes a coherent stratigraphy for the main Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks of the South Shetland Islands along with a new geological map.
However, few attempts have been conducted to correlate the geological units throughout this archipelago. Over the last few decades, numerous geological studies have been carried out in the South Shetland Islands, which have greatly contributed to a better understanding of its geological evolution.
3Department of Earth Sciences, University of Geneva, Genève, Switzerland.2Carrera de Geología, Universidad Santo Tomás, Santiago, Chile.1Department of Geology, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin, Ireland.Joaquín Bastías 1,2,3*, David Chew 1, Camila Villanueva 2, Teal Riley 4, Joseline Manfroi 5, Cristine Trevisan 5, Marcelo Leppe 5, Paula Castillo 6, Fernando Poblete 7, Dieter Tetzner 4, Gregory Giuliani 8, Bastián López 2, Hong Chen 9, Guang-Gao Zheng 9, Yue Zhao 9, Liang Gao 10, Anna Rauch 11 and Ricardo Jaña 12
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