Implications for Gondwana of new Ordovician paleomagnetic data from igneous rocks in southern Victoria Land, East Antarctica

New paleomagnetic data presented here from the southern Victoria Land (SVL) region of East Antarctica further refine the Gondwana early Paleozoic apparent polar wander path. The results are based on paleomagnetic analyses of Early to Middle Ordovician granitoids and dike swarms from which a new SVL pole (23°E, 3.5°S, A95 = 5.9°) was calculated. The new SVL paleomagnetic pole agrees with less well‐determined Ordovician poles from other parts of East Antarctica indicating little or no translation/rotation across the East Antarctic craton since the Middle Ordovician. A new Gondwana ∼475 Ma mean pole (11°E 36°N, A95 = 7°, N = 4 studies, in African coordinates) has been calculated from African, Australian, and Antarctic Early and early Middle Ordovician paleomagnetic poles. Age reassignment of the Antarctic Sør Rondane paleopole (Zijderveld, 1968) places it into the Cambrian period and when combined with other Gondwana Cambrian poles results in a new Gondwana ∼515 Ma pole (7°E, 22°N, A95 = 9.5°, N = 7 studies, in African coordinates). The new Gondwana ∼515 Ma and ∼475 Ma poles, when compared with poles of similar age from Laurentia, allow paleogeographic reconstructions to be made that are in keeping with models predicting that Iapetus Ocean basin opening and closure may have been related first to rifting and then collision of Laurentia with Gondwana. The paleomagnetic data also suggest that most of West Gondwana moved toward lower latitudes between the Middle/Late Cambrian and the late Early Ordovician which may be reflected in the fossil record.