The catchment for the Ross Sea ice includes both the East and the West Antarctic ice sheets, but the mass balance is a direct response to climate change. Our work is aimed to reconstruct the ice flows after the Last Glacial Maximum and is based on apatite fission track data from samples collected from 18 piston cores across the Ross Sea embayment. Fission track ages have been divided into meaningful populations and then compared with bedrock ages from West and East Antarctica. Furthermore, fission track lengths have been measured on each population and then compared through forward modeling with thermal histories derived from literature. The widespread presence of apatites with cooling ages of about 30–40 Ma reveals a main exhumation phase of the Transantarctic Mountains during the Oligocene associated to the last phases of the West Antarctic Rift System. Furthermore, the presence of key marker apatites (e.g., younger than 21 Ma or older than 230 Ma) allows to identify the Central High as a major ice flow divide.

中文翻译：

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最后一次冰川最大期罗斯海冰流的磷灰石裂变径迹特征

罗斯海冰流域包括南极东部和西部冰盖，但质量平衡是对气候变化的直接反应。我们的工作旨在重建上一次冰河极盛期之后的冰流，并基于磷灰石裂变径迹数据，该数据来自从横跨罗斯海通道的18个活塞芯收集的样本。裂变径迹年龄被划分为有意义的种群，然后与南极西部和东部的基岩年龄进行比较。此外，已经测量了每个种群的裂变径迹长度，然后通过正向建模与从文献中得出的热历史进行了比较。冷却年龄约30-40 Ma的磷灰石的广泛存在揭示了渐新世期间与南极西裂谷系统最后阶段有关的跨南极山的主要掘出阶段。此外，关键标记磷灰石的存在（例如，年龄小于21 Ma或年龄大于230 Ma）可以将中央高地识别为主要的冰流鸿沟。