Abstract
IN a lecture to the Royal Institution delivered on March 3 on the new polar province in the Antarctic, Sir Douglas Mawson, after pointing out the extent of the antarctic that has been placed under the administration of the Australian Commonwealth, outlined the most recent ideas with regard to the antarctic continent. His own discoveries in the Australian province confirm the belief, previously held, of the continuity of the southern land mass. The rocks are pre-Cambrian and early Palozoic in the main but on the Pacific side there is a large tract of Permian to Triassic beds lying almost horizontally on the older formations. South of the American continent, however, a region of different tectonic structure is found with folded beds of secondary and tertiary age. This region, known generally as Graham Land, appears to be an island chain bound together and to the continent by a permanent shelf-ice sheet of great thickness. Sir Douglas Mawson pointed to the possibility of the Ross Barrier at the head of the Ross Sea extending unbroken to the barrier at the head of the Weddell Sea. If this is the case, the archipelago of Graham Land is not part of the antarctic continent but is joined to it by a vast sheet of floating shelf-ice. The lecture has recently been made available in pamphlet form.
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The Antarctic Continent. Nature 132, 94–95 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132094e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132094e0