Glacial Sediment Studies

1. The discovery of two layers of ground moraine separated by river gravels at 1800 m on Table Mountain indicates two distinct periods of temperate glaciation separated by a warm period. Previously only one such glaciation prior to 5 million years ago had been postulated to account for the scattered high level moraines in the Transantarctic Mountains (Mayewski, 1973).
2. sea water was discovered in a rift on the Crazy Ice Rise near the head of the Ross Ice Shelf. The rift, about 15 m deep and 2 m wide, has a floor of ice 10 cm thick, which can easily be broken. The water beneath is salty, and has the same freezing point and salinity as normal sea water. In addition, red-brown filamentous algae were collected. The rift is 500 km south of the southern margin of the Ross Sea, and has given access to the world's most southerly sea water. Samples collected will provide valuable data on the nature of the sea beneath the ice shelf. This is the first page 11 time that the sea beneath the Ross Ice Shelf has been sampled, and the results (Barrett, in preparation) will be of great value and interest to oceanographers and marine biologists.
3. About 120 samples were taken from cores drilled by the Dry valley Drilling Project (Holes 10, 11, 12) and a further 100 were taken from around Table Mountain, Taylor Glacier and New Harbour for comparative study. These will require months of work to analyse and interpret, and are being worked up as an M.Sc. thesis (Powell, in preparation).