Mount Discovery

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Mount Discovery is a conspicuous isolated volcanic cone standing at the entrance to McMurdo Sound on the edge of the Ross Sea east of Koettlitz glacier. It towers above the north-western part of the Ross Ice Shelf and forms the center of a star-shaped land mass, with the Brown Peninsula in the north, Minna Bluff to the east and the neighboring volcano of Mount Morning in the West.

Mount Discovery emerged at the turn of the Miocene / Pliocene about 5.3 million years ago. The youngest crater vents are about 1.8 million years old and thus out of the transition from Pliocene to Pleistocene. The volcano is part of a rift zone that separates East from Westantarktika. The mountain is covered for the most part with glacial ice. The summit consists of lava flows and volcanic debris flows and glazigenem sediment, which consists of the volcanic material crushed by the action of glaciers. Such deposits cover, according to the extent of mountain glaciers, large parts of the volcano.

The mountain was named by the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904) after their ship, the HMS Discovery. However, Mount Discovery was first visited in 1958 by a research team from New Zealand, the first ascent took place one year later.