Shackleton Range

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The Shackleton Range is a partially ice-free mountain in Antarctica, the 240 km in east-west direction extends and has an area of ​​about 14,000 km ². The main peaks reach heights 1400-1600 m; the greatest height, the Summit on Holmes with 1875 m. The mountain was named after the British polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Discovery history

The Shackleton Range was first spotted in December 1955 from an Argentinean aircraft. Other sightings were made during the Commonwealth Trans - Antarctic Expedition 1955-58 by British aircraft. In October 1957 for the first time entered two surveyors and a geologist of a British expedition the mountains. In addition to the topographical recording geological samples were collected. In the Südsommern between November 1968 and February 1971, the survey work was continued and explored the geology of the mountain in its basic features. Detailed geological research in various mountainous parts were made in the Südsommern 1975/76 bis 1982/83 by Soviet expeditions, the results of which, however, were scientifically analyzed and published only up to the Expedition 1977/78. Two expeditions were organized in the aftermath of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, the so-called GEISHA expedition 1987/88 and the EURO HACK Expedition 1994/95. Focus of these expeditions were geological and geophysical work programs.

Geography

The Shackleton Range extends over a distance of about 240 km from the southeastern end of the Filchner Ice Shelf to the east, with a maximum north- south distance of 70 km. In the north, the mountain range by the Slessor Glacier, bounded on the south by the Recovery Glacier. The ice-free nunataks and mountain ranges rise from 400 m at the western edge of the mountains up to 1,800 meters at the eastern end of.

Smaller glaciers and extensive snow- fields, the ice-free areas are divided into six parts:

• In the far west of the Otter Highlands, to the eastern edge of the Blailock Glacier flows to the north;
• Thereafter the Haskard Highlands, bounded on the east by the Stratton Glacier;
• The La Grange nunataks that the Stratton and the Gordon glaciers are scattered ² over an area of ​​more than 1600 km in the north of the mountain range between;
• The Herbert Mountains in the north central part of the Shackleton Range;
• The Pioneers Escarpment in the north- east;
• And in the south of the mountain the Read Mountains with the slightly westward remote Stephenson Bastion.

The central region of the Shackleton Range is an old peneplain, which is almost completely covered by snow fields. In the north- western part of the Shackleton Range are two small, permanently ice-covered lakes, the Nostoc Lake at the foot of Mount Provender in the Haskard Highlands and the Folkertssee in the northwestern La Grange nunataks.

The Shackleton Range is not a " meteorite trap" as other regions of Antarctica. The so far only documented Fund is a 3.5 -pound nickel-iron meteorite that was discovered by the GEISHA expedition.

Geology

In the south of the Shackleton Range, the edge of the Precambrian Antarctic shield is open. There in the Read Mountains form mittelproterozoische gneisses the Basement, are obtained on the remains of a Cambrian, metamorphic low overburden. At the end of the Cambrian period about 500 million years of Antarctic continent collided with another continent (probably a part of southern Africa ), whose fragments have been preserved in the northern Shackleton Range. In this collision rocks of this continent have been pushed as tectonic ceiling south on the Read Mountains. As early as the Ordovician began the erosion, whereby the old rocks of the Antarctic continent is exposed in the center of the Read Mountains as a geological window and the detritus in the northwest of the mountain came to deposit. Especially the Otter Highlands are built of green sandstones, conglomerates and siltstones, the latter of which contain trace fossils, which have a Ordovician age.

At the end of the Carboniferous the Shackleton Range was first covered by glaciers. In their retreat in the Permian sediment were deposited, whose remains have been preserved in some places in the eastern part of the mountains and the latest known rocks of the Shackleton Range form.