Littlewood Nunatakker

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Littlewood Nunatakker
location Prinzregent-Luitpold-Land , East Antarctica
Littlewood Nunatakker (Antarctica)
Littlewood Nunatakker
Coordinates 77 ° 53 ′  S , 34 ° 20 ′  W Coordinates: 77 ° 53 ′  S , 34 ° 20 ′  W
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The Littlewood Nunatakker form a group of four flat rock ridges on the coast of Prinzregent-Luitpold-Land in Antarctica that protrude from the ice sheet .

Discovery and geographic location

Three of the four Nunatakker were discovered and mapped in January 1912 by the Second German Antarctic Expedition (1911–1912) under Wilhelm Filchner , but were not given a name at that time. During an American expedition with the USS Edisto in January 1959, the fourth Nunatak was discovered and the Nunatak group was named after the oceanographer William H. Littlewood .

The Nunatakker are located at 250 m above sea level, about 25 km inland from Vahsel Bay on the southeast coast of the Weddell Sea . Immediately south of the Nunatakker the Lerchenfeld Glacier flows into the Vahsel Bay. The closest ice-free areas are the Bertrab-Nunatakker about 6 km in a south-westerly direction.

geology

The Nunatakker consist of horizontally stored rhyolites that were formed by volcanic activity about 1110 mya . These are cut through by 25 cm to 5 m thick mafic and rocky tunnels . Since their formation, these rocks have not been changed by ore formation processes, whereas the rocks in the closest ice-free mountains ( Shackleton Range 300 km in the southeast, Heimefrontfjella 800 km in the northwest) were folded and highly metamorphic overprinted before 550 mya when the continent Gondwana was formed. According to the current state of research, the Bertrab, Littlewood and Moltke Nunatakker are the only outcrops of an otherwise completely ice-covered microcontinent that was attached to Antarctica when Gondwana was formed.

literature

  • Georg Kleinschmidt & Steven Boger: The Bertrab, Littlewood and Moltke Nunataks of Prinz-Regent-Luitpold-Land (Coats Land) - Enigma of East Antarctic Geology . In: Polar Research . tape 78 , 2008, p. 95-104 ( awi.de [PDF; 5.0 MB ]).

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