Wilkesland

The Wilke country is the largest sector of the Australian Antarctic Territory, East Antarctica. It borders the Indian Ocean and is situated between Queen Mary Coast and the Terre Adélie. It represents a sector that extends over a distance of 2600 kilometers to the south pole and includes an area of ​​about 2,600,000 square kilometers. It is divided into five sections:

Occasionally, the Wilke country is also broader and then also includes Terre Adélie, which belongs to the French Antarctic Territory.

Wilke country is Charles Wilkes, leader of the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842, named. This reported in December 1839 sighting of a " Antarctic continent ".

2006 under the Antarctic ice, discovered on the basis of gravity anomalies, a meteorite impact crater that has a diameter of almost 500 km. It was formed about 250 million years ago by the impact of a huge meteorite with a diameter of up to 50 km. Thus, the Wilke country meteorite was about four to five times greater than that which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. This event is considered as a possible contributing cause of the mass extinction at the Permian - Triassic boundary, became extinct in which nearly 70 percent of all species. Furthermore, the meteorite could have contributed to the formation of a trench in the eastern Indian Ocean, ultimately Australia was split off from supercontinent Gondwana by the.