Abstract
A USEFUL reference to recent summaries of the geological features of Antarctica occurs in the Proceedings of the first Pacific Conference, part iii. p. 644 (1921). It is unfortunate that the various researches based on the results of different British expeditions have not been carried out in a common clearing-house and published as an interlocking series. At present three sets of quarto publications are appearing in our libraries, two of them under the auspices of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and one under those of the Trustees of the British Museum. Mr. J. M. Wordie's observations qn the Weddell Sea area (Shackleton expedition, 1914–17) have been already noticed (Nature, vol. 109, p. 218). The geological results of the expedition from the Falkland Islands in 1913, financed by Messrs. Salvesen of Leith, are now describedv by the leader, Mr. D. Ferguson (“Geological Observations in the South Shetlands, the Palmer Archipelago, and Graham Land,” Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. liii. p. 29, 1921). The unrest in the earth's crust in Oligocene and Miocene times is illustrated by great outpourings of basalt, in the South Shetland Islands. The later lavas of the series are notably columnar, and are correlated with similar rocks in Patagonia. Volcanic activity continued almost down to recent times,and there is a series of andesitic tuffs and lavas that go back to Jurassic or early Cretaceous age. The photographic landscapes in this memoir are of unusual excellence. The rocks collected abundantly by its author are described by G. W. Tyrrell in a separate memoir (ibid. p. 57). They include the varied intrusive masses of Graham Land and its group of islands, and the red adamellite of Mount Theodore, “the most imposing natural feature” of the district. Mr. Tyrrell regards these older igneous rocks as distinctly Andean in type.
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C., G. Geology of Antarctic Lands. Nature 110, 96–97 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/110096a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/110096a0