The Heirtzler fracture zone is an undersea

fracture zone A fracture zone is a linear feature on the ocean floor—often hundreds, even thousands of kilometers long—resulting from the action of offset mid-ocean ridge axis segments. They are a consequence of plate tectonics. Lithospheric plates on eit ...

located south of

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, near

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

, that has been estimated to have been a propagator region of the

Pacific–Antarctic Ridge The Pacific-Antarctic Ridge (PAR, Antarctic Pacific Ridge, South Pacific Rise, South Pacific Ridge) is a divergent tectonic plate boundary located on the seafloor of the South Pacific Ocean, separating the Pacific plate from the Antarctic plat ...

for 5–6 million years. The presumed seismically and tectonically active portion of this fracture zone is known as the Heirtzler transform fault and divides a portion of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge where spreading rates increase towards its axial north from /year over a distance of . The Heirtzler transform fault portion has areas of gravity highs, and as well as its larger propagating region, it has to the southeast a smaller Pacific-Antarctic Ridge propagator that may have started about one million years ago, with both associated with clockwise changes in spreading direction. The feature was named for James R. Heirtzler, a geophysicist who was a pioneer in geomagnetics studies. The name was proposed by the Lamont–Doherty Geological Observatory (now the

Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory The Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) is a research, research institution specializing in the Earth science and climate change. Though part of Columbia University, it is located on a separate closed campus in Palisades, New York. The obs ...

), and was approved by the

Advisory Committee on Undersea Features Advisory may refer to: * Advisory board, a body that provides advice to the management of a corporation, organization, or foundation * Boil-water advisory, a public health directive given by government to consumers when a community's drinking wate ...

in 1993.

References

Acknowlegement

{{coord, 63, 30, S, 162, 30, E, source:GNIS, display=title Geology of the Southern Ocean