Resumen de The contourite drifts over the Ewing Terrace (NE Argentina,SW Atlantic)

Graziella Bozzano, Roberto A. Violante, C. Marcelo Paterlini, Francisco Javier Hernández Molina, Till Hanebuth, Tammo Huppertz, Michael Strasser, Sebastian Razik, María Julia Orgeira, Sebastian Krastel

• Large contourite drifts have been recently found over the Ewing Terrace on the middle slope of the northeastern Argentina continental margin at water depths that range from 600 to 1190 m approximately. Sediment cores from two recent oceanographic cruises together with the information gathered from cores collected during the past 50 years allowed us to define the rough extension of the drifts. Magnetic susceptibility proved to be very useful proxy for contourite sandy facies identification in this region. We found increasing thickness of the contourite drifts at deeper water depths, probably as a response to the variations in intensity and location of the northward flowing Antarctic Intermediate Water that forms these deposits. We expect that further sedimentological analyses combined with seismic information will shed more light on these newly detected contourite drifts