Vega Island
| Vega Island | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Waters | Weddell Sea | |
| Archipelago | Ross Islands | |
| Geographical location | 63 ° 50 ′ S , 57 ° 25 ′ W | |
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| length | 32.5 km | |
| width | 16.5 km | |
| surface | 253 km² | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
The Vega Island ( English Vega Island , Spanish isla Vega ) is an island in the Weddell Sea . It is located immediately north of James Ross Island and south of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula .
geography
Vega Island is to the west of the Erebus and Terror Gulf . It is separated from the larger James Ross Island in the west and in the south by Herbert Sound, which is 5 km wide at its narrowest point . In the north, behind the Prince Gustav Canal , which contains several small islands ( Eagle Island , Corry Island, Beak Island and others), the Trinity Peninsula . In a bay on the north coast of Vega Island 2 km long island lies Devil Iceland , because of their colony from nearly 15,000 breeding pairs of Adeliepinguins by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area is shown (AQ072).
The Vega Island is 32.5 km long, up to 16.5 km wide and has an area of 253 km². The island has two ice caps , from which numerous glaciers originate, some of which extend to the coast. Since the end of 1999, mass balance measurements have been carried out annually at the Glaciar Bahía del Diablo , an outlet glacier in the north of the island . A total of 66 percent of the island is glaciated. From 1988 to 2009 the area of the glaciers decreased by 10 km². The largest ice-free area is at Cape Lamb in the southwest of the island.
Vega Island is an important site for fossils from the late Cretaceous period . At Cape Lamb in particular, fossils of conifers , of marine reptiles such as elasmosaurs and mosasaurs, and of hadrosaurs belonging to the dinosaurs were found. The Vegavis iaai from the late Cretaceous, discovered here, is considered the oldest reliable evidence of modern birds .
history
The island was first sighted on January 6, 1843 by James Clark Ross , who considered it to be part of the Antarctic Peninsula together with James Ross Island and Snow Hill Island . Only the Swedish Antarctic Expedition , which lasted from 1901 to 1903, was able to determine the island's character. The expedition leader Otto Nordenskjöld named the island after the barque Vega , with which his uncle Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld was the first to conquer the Northeast Passage .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Vega Island in the Australian Antarctic Data Center (English)
- ↑ Devil Island (AQ072) , datasheet on the BirdLife International website, accessed July 23, 2018.
- ↑ a b c B. J. Davies, JL Carrivick, NF Glasser, MJ Hambrey, JL Smellie: A new glacier inventory for 2009 reveals spatial and temporal variability in glacier response to atmospheric warming in the Northern Antarctic Peninsula, 1988–2009 (PDF; 4, 0 MB). In: The Cryosphere Discussions . 5, 2011, pp. 3541-3594 (English), doi : 10.5194 / tcd-5-3541-2011
- ↑ World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS): Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin No. 11 (2008-2009). Zurich 2011, pp. 15–18 (English).
- ^ Claudia Tambussi and Carolina Acosta Hospitaleche: Antarctic Birds (Neornithes) during the Cretaceous-Eocene Times. (PDF; 718 kB) In: Revista de la Asociación Geológica Argentina 62 (4), 2007, S 604–617 (English)
- ^ JA Clarke, CP Tambussi, JI Noriega, GM Erickson, RA Ketcham: Definitive fossil evidence for the extent of avian radiation in the Cretaceous. (PDF; 342 kB) In: Nature 433, 2005, pp. 305–308 (English)
- ^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 2 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 673 ( limited preview in Google Book search).