Notes on the geology of the area between the heads of the Beardmore and Shackleton glaciers, Antarctica

Abstract

Four stratigraphic columns from the upper part of the Beacon Group near the Mill and Keltie Glaciers are presented. The oldest formation examined, the Buckley Coal Measures, contains a good Glossopteris flora. Well developed cyclothems in the overlying Falla Formation are considered to reflect deposition under acid conditions by rivers whose courses shifted over a slowly subsiding flood plain. The Falla Formation is overlain by the Dominion Coal Measures, whose type section is described. Middle or Upper Triassic plants found in an erratic boulder at the head of the Mill Glacier may have come from the Dominion Coal Measures. These formations of the Beacon Group are overlain by tholeiitic flood basalts of the Kirkpatrick Basalt and are intruded by comagmatic Ferrar Dolerite. The occurrence of secondary minerals, including zeolites, in the basalts is briefly discussed. A compact till containing dolerite boulders, which crops out on the edge of the Polar Plateau at the head of the Shackleton Glacier, is compared with tillite found recently by Oliver near Plunket Point, at the head of the Beardmore Glacier. Both are considered to be Quaternary.