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In memory of Campbell Craddock: When J. Campbell Craddock (1972) published his famous 1:5 000 000 map of the Geology of Antarctica, he established major units such as the East Antarctic Craton, the early Palaeozoic Ross, the Mesozoic Ellsworth, and the Cenozoic Andean orogens. It is already evident from this...

Platinum-group element (PGE) abundances were analysed in basaltic andesites and andesites from sills of the Ferrar Large Igneous Province in northern Victoria Land. The strongly fractionated primitive mantle-normalised PGE- patterns show enrichment of the Pt-PGE over the Ir-PGE. The single element abundances exhibit good correlations with the degree of differentiation of the...

The recovery of material of a small theropod from the Early Maastrichtian, Cape Lamb Member of the Snow Hill Island Formation is an unusual occurrence from primarily marine sediments. The pedal morphology of the specimen that includes a Metatarsal II with a lateral expansion caudal to Metatarsal III, a third...

Field data gathered during GANOVEX IX (2005/2006) in Northern Victoria Land, Antarctica, indicate that volcaniclastic deposits of phreatomagmatic eruptions (so-called Exposure Hill Type events) are intercalated with fluvial deposits of Triassic-Jurassic age at two stratigraphic levels. Abundant scoriaceous spatter (locally welded) indicates a hawaiian/strombolian component. Breccia-filled diatremes, from which volcaniclastic...

The use of a geographic information system (GIS) allows the mapping and quantification of biotic and physical features of importance to the environmental planning of Antarctic areas. In this paper we examined the main aspects of the geoenvironments of Arctowski Station vicinity (Admiralty bay, Maritime Antartica), by means of a...

Of some 800 m of lower Oligocene marine sediments cored continuously from the seafloor in the Victoria Land Basin of Antarctica at Cape Roberts Site CRP-3, the lower 500 m exhibit authigenic smectite clay coats on shallow-water sandstone grains. A scanning electron microscope/EDS study of 46 fracture sections confirms that...

Seismic soundings of Lake Vostok have been performed by the Polar Marine Geological Research Expedition in collaboration with the Russian Antarctic Expedition since the early 1990s. The seismograms recorded show at least two relatively closely spaced reflections associated with the lake bottom. These were initially interpreted as boundaries of a...

Extensional forces within the Antarctic Plate have produced the Transantarctic Mountains rift-flank uplift along the West Antarctic rift margin. Large-scale linear morphologic features within the mountains are controlled by bedrock structure and can be recognized and mapped from satellite imagery and digital elevation models (DEMs). This study employed the Antarctic...

The borehole at the southern part of subglacial Lake Vostok has been drilled into an ice layer that has been refrozen from the lake water. This ice layer contains random sediment inclusions, eight of which have been studied using state-of the-art analytical techniques. Six inclusions comprise soft aggregates consisting mainly of...

The Glossopteridales are an extinct group of seed ferns that dominated Gondwana during the Permian. The strap-shaped leaves of Glossopteris are widespread and provided early evidence of continental drift, but reproductive organs of this group have remained enigmatic since they were first described in the 1950s. Based on compression- impression fossils, there are...

The polar regions play an important role in Earth's geodynamic and climatic systems. Modern airborne geophysical surveys combine radio-echo sounding, aeromagnetic and aerogravity methods to explore the geology of these regions. This paper reviews some recent aerogeophysical investigations undertaken by the British Antarctic Survey to: 1) Image subglacial rifts of Jurassic age in...

Investigations of SKS wave splitting of teleseismic events from digital seismographs recorded at eight stations around the Lützow-Holm Bay Region have lead to understanding the evolution of the Antarctic Plate. The observed delay times of SKS splitting are up to 1.3 s, which are generally equal to the global average....

The stability of ground surface and preservation of landforms that record past events and environments is of great importance as the geologic and climatic history is evaluated in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Currently little is known about the regolith transport that tends to eradicate and confound this record and...

Field activities in the Britannia Range (Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica) highlighted new geological features around the so-called Byrd Glacier discontinuity. Recent field surveys revealed the occurrence of significant amounts of medium- to high-grade metamorphic rocks, intruded by abundant coarse-grained porphyritic granitoids. Most of the granitoids are deformed, with foliation parallel to...

This is the first report of a fossil flora from Hannah Point, Livingston Island, South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. The fossiliferous content of an outcrop, located between two igneous rock units of Cretaceous age are mainly composed of leaf imprints and some fossil trunks. The leaf assemblage consists of 18 taxa...

In the Cambrian, the paleo-Pacific margin of the Gondwana supercontinent included East Antarctica, Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand and was affected by themajor Ross-Delamerian Orogeny. In Antarctica, evidence suggests that this resulted from oblique subduction and that in northern Victoria Land it was accompanied by the opening and subsequent closure...

The opening history of both the Weddell Sea and South Atlantic Ocean is critical to understanding the break- up of Gondwana and the evolution of Antarctica since Early Jurassic times. The dispersal of the Gondwanide fragments is important to understanding the development of past ocean circulation. Unfortunately the tectonics of the Weddell...

We report the TiO2 solubility in garnet and orthopyroxene coexisting with rutile calibrated from experimental data at pressures 7–20 kbar and temperatures 850–1300°C in two Antarctic granulite systems.The Ti would substitute for the tetrahedral Si, whereas we could not find positive evidence of the coupled substitution of M-Ti (M is...

Principal Components Analysis (PCA) in S-Mode (correlation between temporal series) was performed on sea ice monthly anomalies, in order to investigate which are the main temporal patterns, where are the homogenous areas located and how are they related to the sea surface temperature (SST). This analysis provides 9 patterns (4...

The mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic boundary produced a floral turnover in Gondwana in which Paleozoic seed ferns belonging to the Glossopteridales were replaced by corystosperm seed ferns and other seed plant groups in the Mesozoic. Secondary growth (wood production) in both plant groups provides information on plant growth in...

The rapid global increase in benthic foraminiferal δ18O in the early Oligocene (~33.6 Ma) has been taken to imply the first appearance of large, permanent ice sheets on Antarctica, possibly coupled to deep sea cooling and/or Northern Hemisphere ice growth. This oxygen isotope shift is accompanied by a reorganization of...

Field investigations in North Victoria Land, Antarctica during GANOVEX IX (2005/2006) allow the revision of the Triassic-Jurassic stratigraphy of ~300 m thick continental deposits in between the crystalline basement and the Kirkpatrick lava flows of the Ferrar Group. The lower stratigraphic unit (Section Peak Formation) is characterised by braided river-type...

The instrument SCIAMACHY onboard the European ENVISAT mission provides unique capabilities for deriving atmospheric geophysical parameters. Since its launch in early 2002 it has operated successfully in orbit. Due to ENVISAT’s high inclination orbit the polar regions are monitored continuously. We report here results about the status of the polar...

Thisstudy is based on about 4000 km of MCS, magnetic and gravity data as well as 10 sonobuoys collected by the 2005 Russian Antarctic Expedition in the Mawson Sea and adjacent Australian-Antarctic basin between 102°E and 115°E. Major identified tectonic provinces and features of the study region include: 1) A marginal...

This research focuses on a detailed study of faunal and biogeochemical changes that occurred at ODP Hole 747A in the Kerguelen Plateau region of the Southern Ocean during the middle Miocene (14.8-11.8 Ma). Abundance fluctuations of several planktonic foraminiferal taxa, stable oxygen isotope and Mg/Ca ratios have been integrated as...