Grand Chasms
| Grand Chasms | ||
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| location | Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf , Weddell Sea | |
| Coordinates | 78 ° 37 ′ S , 37 ° 54 ′ W | |
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The Grand Chasms (English for large crevices ) were two or more deep crevasses in the middle of the Antarctic Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf . They extended immediately west of the Touchdown Hills in a westerly direction over an area of around 100 km in length and between 0.4 and 5 km in width. The crevasses were the only known notable faults in the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf.
Participants in the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1955-1958), led by British polar explorer Vivian Fuchs, discovered them. The American seismologist Edward C. Thiel named it descriptively in the course of a survey carried out from Ellsworth Station in 1957 .
Landsat recordings from March 1986 showed massive calving of the ice shelf in the vicinity of the crevices, so that they no longer exist today.
Web links
- Grand Chasms in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey (English)
- Grand Chasms on geographic.org (English)