Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
0°
Lazarev
Base
Syowa Base
Yamato Mts.
Belgica Mts.
Larsen
Ice Shelf
Ronne
Ice Shelf
Amery
Ice Shelf
Neptune Mts.
South Pole
Ellsworth Mts.
Thiel Mts.
Dome C
Ross Ice Shelf
Drawin Camp
Purgatory Peak (Dry Valleys)
Scott
Base
Mt. Baldr
Allan Hills
Reckling Peaks
Elephant Moraine
Antarctica
KEY:
Continental Boundary
McMurdo Station
Granite Harbor
Ice Shelf Border
Major Glaciers
Meteorite Find
Adelie
Land
180°
500 km
Figure 1.1.
Meteorite finds in Antarctica: 1911-2012. From
Marvin and MacPherson
[1989].
three more meteorites had been found during geological
surveys. In 1961 Russian geologists discovered two frag-
ments of Lazarev, an iron meteorite lying on a rocky spur
of the Humboldt Mountains. Later in that same year,
geologists of the U.S. Geological Survey picked up two
pieces of Thiel Mountains, a pallasite, lying on hard
irregularly surfaced glacier ice, where it was associated
with debris of a moraine. Three years later, in 1964,
another team of U.S. Survey geologists found Neptune
Mountains, an iron on a mountainside in the Pensacola
Range. Of these three finds, only Thiel Mountains lay
on ice. Cassidy realized that this sparse record of four
meteorite finds in the past 63 years could not be read as
particularly encouraging, but to him it emphasized the
importance of the new discovery reported by the Shimas
of nine different kinds of meteorites on a patch of ice in
the Yamato Mountains. He took it as positive proof that
a concentration mechanism, unknown on bare ground,
can be effective on ice. And he never doubted that addi-
tional concentrations of meteorites would be discovered
in Antarctica once serious searches for them began.
1.2. CASSIDY'S FIRST PROPOSAL TO THE NSF
FOR METEORITE SEARCHES
Before the deadline of 1 June 1974, Cassidy submitted
his first proposal to the National Science Foundation,
which supported all projects of U.S. scientists in Antarctica.
He even included in it the possibility of finding lunar mete-
orites there [
Cassidy
, 1998, personal communication]:
