Puerto Rico Trench Negative Gravity Anomaly Belt

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Abstract
The Puerto Rico trench negative free-air gravity anomaly belt extends from south of Barbados, around the Antillean arc, to eastern Cuba. The free-air minimum east of the Lesser Antilles is related to underthrusting of the Caribbean plate by the Atlantic Ocean plate. Here the axis of the free-air minimum lies very close to the eastern border of a zone of epicenters which apparently marks the commencement of crustal faulting along the underthrust. The line of trend of historic volcanoes of the Lesser Antillean arc is equidistant (160 km) from the axis of minimum free-air anomaly. It is postulated that differential shifts between the Caribbean plate and the underthrust Atlantic plate have occurred at least twice, once in late Eocene to early Oligocene, during which the outer island chain of the northern Lesser Antillean arc was formed, and again sometime since the late Miocene, when the Barbados ridge and associated uplifted topography were formed. This latter deformation caused the disappearance of a trench opposite the southern Lesser Antillean arc and a displacement of the Puerto Rico trench axis oceanward away from the axis of the negative free-air anomaly belt near the northeast corner of the Caribbean plate.

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