Alan Parkinson gave me this tip-off about the survey of the Gamburtsev mountains in Antarctica, the size of the Alps, extending 1,200 km and reaching heights of 3,400km, but covered by 600m ice. Scientists suggest that the mountains may have been the starting point for the development of the ice sheets in Antarctica, over 30 million years ago. There is a nice animation of ice sheet development on the continent in the article.

The purpose of the work is to find out why the mountains developed in the interior of the continent, a very unusual geographical phenomenon. One theory is the area was a hotspot on the Earth’s surface and volcanoes resulted in the range.

The scientist face a tough survey though, the mountains transverse the pole of inaccessibility, temperatures of -80. Enough said!

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Posted in Extreme Environments, Resources
Written on Thu, 14 December 2006 at 9:53 pm

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