Wilkesland

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The location of Wilkesland in Antarctica

The Wilkesland is the largest area of ​​the Australian Antarctic Territory of Eastern Antarctica . It borders the Indian Ocean and lies between the Queen Mary Coast and Adélieland . 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:

  1. Knox coast between 100 ° 31 'and 109 ° 16' east longitude
  2. Budd coast between 109 ° 16 ′ and 115 ° 33 ′ east longitude
  3. Sabrina coast between 115 ° 33 'and 122 ° 05' east longitude
  4. Banzare coast between 122 ° 05 ′ and 130 ° 10 ′ east longitude
  5. Clarie coast between 130 ° 10 ′ and 136 ° 11 ′ east longitude

Occasionally, the Wilkesland is also broadly defined and then also includes the Adélieland , which belongs to the French Antarctic region.

Wilkesland is named after Charles Wilkes , who headed the United States Exploring Expedition from 1838 to 1842. In December 1839, he reported the sighting of an "Antarctic continent".

In 2006 a meteorite impact crater with a diameter of almost 500 km was discovered under the Antarctic ice due to gravity anomalies . It was formed about 250 million years ago by the impact of a very large meteorite with a diameter of up to 50 km. This made the Wilkesland meteorite about four to five times larger than the one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago . This event is considered to be a possible contributory cause of the mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic border , in which almost 70 percent of all species became extinct . Furthermore, the meteorite impact could have contributed to the formation of a rift in the eastern Indian Ocean , which ultimately split Australia from the supercontinent Gondwana .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Big Bang in Antarctica: Killer Crater Found Under Ice www.spaceref.com, June 2, 2006 (accessed March 9, 2010)
  2. ↑ Earth's Biggest Asteroid Impact Ever -Did It Occur in Antarctica? NASA Gravity Maps Point to "Yes" dailygalaxy.com, March 8, 2010

Coordinates: 69 ° 0 ′ 0 ″  S , 120 ° 0 ′ 0 ″  E