Abstract:

Antarctic Ice Sheet has been one of the most important components of the global environmental regime ever since its formation in the Antarctic continent from the early Cenozoic. Its dynamic evolution not only controls all the geological processes including weathering, transportation, and sedimentation happened in Antarctic region, but also reflects and partly controls the global change. Therefore, it is of great significance to study its evolutionary history. So far, a lot of efforts have been made in the studying on the reconstruction of Antarctic Ice Sheet evolutionary history. In this paper, the authors reviewed the former research works in different regions over Antarctic continent and its surrounding sub Antarctic off shore continental shelf, slope and rise, and some deep sea basins. By summarizing the achievements so far have been made in the studies upon the Cenozoic sedimentary strata both in the Antarctic continents and the surrounding oceans, we can conclude that a combination of circum-Antarctic, pan Antarctic and basin specific zonations will be necessary to date and correlate sediments and events within and between polar basins and to assess the impact of Anatrctic Cenozoic climate fluctuations on the geological records at hemispheric and global scales in the future. Special significance of the Cenozoic sediments and sedimentary rocks recently found in Grove Mountains of east Antarctica by Chinese Antarctic Exploration Team has been discussed briefly in the end of this paper.