Kerguelen Plateau
One of the largest igneous provinces (LIPs) in the world, the Kerguelen Plateau covers an area of 1,226,230 km2 (473,450 sq mi) and rises 2,000 m (6,600 ft) above the surrounding oceanic basins.
[7] From the initial opening of the Indian Ocean until present, the Kerguelen hotspot has produced several, now widely dispersed, large-scale structures.
These are now known to cover a time range from 145 to 0 million years ago (Ma) with the oldest assigned structure being the Comei large igneous province in south-eastern Tibet.
In contrast, the magmatism that produced the Australia–India breakup 136–158 Ma created the Wallaby Plateau, but no known hotspot has been linked to this event.
No ridges or hotspot tracks such as Walvis–Rio Grande, Chagos–Laccadive, Greenland–Scotland have been found in the Princess Elizabeth Trough between SKP and Antarctica or along India's conjugate eastern continental margin.
[13] Since the Indian Ocean began to open about 130 Ma, the Kerguelen hotspot has moved 3–10° southward and, consequently, the spreading ridge between India and Antarctica has jumped northward one or several times.
Parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, the Elan Bank and the SKP, were originally attached to India and are composed of continental lithosphere.
One or several ridge jumps transformed the Elan Bank into a microcontinent and dispersed continental fragments in the SKP, and these structures were eventually left behind as India moved northward.
The lack of a conjugate structure on the Antarctic Plate, however, makes it unlikely that the hotspot was located at a spreading ridge during this long period.
[5][17] The presence of soil layers in the basalt which included charcoal and conglomerate fragments of gneiss indicate that much of the plateau was above sea level as what is termed a microcontinent for three periods between 100 million years ago and 20 million years ago[18] (the charcoal was made by wildfires started by lightning or lava flows).
The SKP probably formed an island of 500,000 km2 (190,000 sq mi) with major peaks reaching 1,000–2,000 m (3,300–6,600 ft) above sea level.
