SWEAT (hypothesis)

SWEAT stands for southwestern United States and East Antarctica, which theorizes that the Southwestern United States was at one time connected to East Antarctica. A hypothesis for a late Precambrian fit of western North America with the Australia-Antarctic shield region permits the extension of many features through Antarctica and into other parts of Gondwana, specifically, the Grenville orogen may extend around the coast of East Antarctica into India and Australia. The ophiolitic belt of the latter may extend into East Antarctica. The Wopmay orogen of northwest Canada may extend through eastern Australia into Antarctica and thence beneath the ice to connect with the Yavapai-Mazatzal orogens of the southwestern United States. Counterparts of the Precambrian-Paleozoic sedimentary rocks along the U.S. Cordilleran miogeocline may be present in the Transantarctic Mountains. Orogenic belt boundaries provide useful piercing points for Precambrian continental reconstructions. The model implies that Gondwana and Laurentia drifted away from each other on one margin and collided some 300 million years later on their opposite margins to form the Appalachians.

A paper published by an international team led by John Goodge, an NSF-funded researcher with the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, gives significant support to the theory.

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