Mount Discovery
| Mount Discovery | ||
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 View from the Ross Ice Shelf towards Mount Discovery (left) and the Brown Peninsula |
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| height | 2681 m | |
| location | Victoria Land , East Antarctica | |
| Coordinates | 78 ° 22 ′ 0 ″ S , 165 ° 1 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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| Type | Stratovolcano , extinguished | |
| First ascent | 1959 | |
 Mount Discovery topographic map (1: 250,000 scale) |
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The Mount Discovery is a 2,681 m high, extinct stratovolcano in East Antarctic Victoria Land . It rises in isolation at the head end of the McMurdo Sound east of the Koettlitz Glacier . It towers over the northwestern 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 in the east and the neighboring volcano Mount Morning in the west.
Mount Discovery was formed at the turn of the Miocene to the Pliocene around 5.3 million years ago. The youngest crater vents are about 1.87 million years old and thus from the early Pleistocene . Further outbreaks into the late Pleistocene are likely. In more recent investigations, two rock samples from the northwest flank of the volcano have been found to be approximately 60,000 and 180,000 years old. The volcano is part of a rift zone that separates east from west Antarctica . Most of the mountain is covered with glacial ice. The summit consists of cooled lava flows and volcanic debris flows as well as glacial sediment, which consists of the volcanic material crushed by the action of the glaciers. Such deposits cover large parts of the volcano, corresponding to the extent of the mountain glaciers.
The mountain was discovered during the Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) under the direction of the British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and named after the RRS Discovery , the ship on this research trip . Mount Discovery was first visited in 1958 by a research team from New Zealand, the first ascent took place again a year later.
Web links
- Mount Discovery in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey .
- Mount Discovery on geographic.org (English).
- Discovery in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English).
- Skiing the Pacific Ring of Fire and Beyond: Mount Discovery. In: skimountaineer.com. Amar Andalkar (English).
Individual evidence
- ^ Lisa Tauxe et al .: Paleomagnetism and 40 Ar / 39 Ar ages from volcanics extruded during the Matuyama and Brunhes Chrons near McMurdo Sound, Antarctica . In: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems . tape 5 , no. June 6 , 2004, ISSN 1525-2027 , doi : 10.1029 / 2003GC000656 (English).