The Queen Maud Mountains

The Transantarctic Mountains were a formidable barrier which the pole seekers had to overcome in order to reach the polar plateau (Section 1.4). Ernest Shackleton and Robert Scott forced their way up the Beardmore Glacier, whereas Roald Amundsen climbed the Axel Heiberg Glacier which he named after one of his supporters in Norway. After 4 days of intense effort he and his men, with the help of 42 dogs, reached the polar plateau on November 21, 1911 (Huntford 1987). Amundsen also named the Queen Maud Mountains after the reigning Queen of Norway (Section 1.4.4). 

The geology of the Queen Maud Mountains was first explored by Laurence Gould during Richard Byrd Ss first Antarctic expedition (1928-1929). Gould used dogsleds and had to travel 800 km across the Ross Ice Shelf just to reach the Queen Maud Mountains (Section 1.5.2 Gould 1935). The geological maps of 

McGregor and Wade (1969) and of Mirsky (1969) indicate that the Queen Maud Mountains consist primarily of metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks of the basement complex which were intruded by the Granite Harbor Inirusives of the Queen Maud batholith. 

The exposures of metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks, which occur extensively and almost continuously in the coastal mountains of the central Transantarctic Mountains, are more scattered in the Queen Maud Mountains except adjacent to the Scott Glacier and in the Harold Byrd Mountains along the Leverett Glacier. However, when viewed as a whole, the geology of the Queen Maud Mountains is dominated by the Granite Harbor Intrusives of the Queen Maud batholith that extends for about 220 km from the eastern side of the Scott Glacier to the Reedy Glacier (Mirsky 1969). 

The Transantarctic Mountains between the Shackleton and Axel Heiberg glaciers in Fig. 6.1 are composed primarily of the Granite Harbor Intrusives. Metasedimentary and metavolcanic basement rocks occur only between the Barrett and the Gough glaciers and in the Duncan Mountains located on the coast between the Liv and Strom glaciers. For this reason, we start the presentation of the geology of the 

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The last two field seasons (1962-63 and 1963-64) in the Antarctic yielded systematic collections of coal by Velon H. Minshew and by William E. Long of the Institute of Polar Studies, The Ohio State University, in the Mount Howe, Mount Weaver, Watson Escarpment, and Thorvald Nilsen areas of the Queen Maud Mountains. During the 1962-63 field season Dwight... 

The Shackleton Glacier (84°35 S, 176°20 W) marks the southern limit of the central Transantarctic Mountains as defined in Fig. 3.1. It is also the northern limit of the Queen Maud Mountains which extend along the strike of the Transantarctic Mountains to the Reedy Glacier and to the Wisconsin Range of the Horlick Mountains located at about 86°S and 125°W. 

Fig. 6.6 The northwestern margin of the Nilsen Plateau at 86°20 S and 158°00 W of the Queen Maud Mountains is dissected by cirques and alpine vaUey glaciers that drain ice which has accumulated on the top of the plateau. Rock outcrops in the cirques and valleys of the northern Nilsen Plateau expose metasedimentary rocks of the La Gorce Formation and metavolcamc rocks of the...

Table 6.2 Stratigraphy of the basement rocks in the Duncan Mountains and the Nilsen Plateau of the Queen Maud Mountains (Stump 1985)...

The igneous rocks of the Wyatt Formation occur at many locations within the Queen Maud Mountains, as well as in the Horlick and Thiel Mountains. In spite of these extensive exposures, the origin of the Wyatt Formation is still uncertain because in some places it clearly intruded folded metasedimentary rocks of the LaGorce Formation, whereas in other places it over-lies them conformably. In addition, hydrothermal alteration of the rocks and the effects of regional metamorphism described by Minshew (1967) have disturbed the isotopic composition of strontium of the rocks, which has caused data points to scatter on Rb-Sr isochron diagrams and caused large uncertainties in age determinations of the Wyatt Formation listed in Table 6.5. 

The most recent geologic map of the Queen Maud Mountains by Davis and Blankenship (2005) indicates that the western half of the Harold Byrd Mountains consists of rocks of the Party Formation and of Granite Harbor Intrusives, whereas the eastern nunataks (Mt. Manke, Cressey Peak, and Fadden Peak) consist of the rocks of the Leverett Formation). Similarly, the Bender... 

In a regional summary of the geology of the basement rocks of the Queen Maud Mountains, Stump (1995) stated that the composition of the Granite Harbor Intrusives varies widely from granite to gabbro but noted that intermediate rocks (e.g., granodiorite and... 

The geologic history of the basanent rocks of the Queen Maud Mountains is recorded by the volcanosedimentary complex which has beai preserved at several... 

Blackburn QA (1937) The Thorne Glacier section of the Queen Maud Mountains. GeogrRev 27 598-614 Borg SG (1980) Petrology and geochemistry of the Wyatt Formation and the Queen Maud bathoUth, upper Scott Glacier area, Antarctica. Unpublished MS thesis, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ... 

Rowell AJ, Gonzales DA, McKenna LW, Evans KR, Stump E, Van Schmus WR (1997) Lower Paleozoic rocks in the Queen Maud Mountains, revised ages and significance. In Ricci CA (ed) The Antarctic region geological evoln-tion and processes. Terra Antartica, Siena, Italy, pp 201-207... 

The basement rocks of the Wisconsin Range in Fig. 7.4 are similar to those of the Queen Maud Mountains (Chapter 6) and are generally correlated with the... 

The rocks exposed in the Thiel Mountains belong to the basement complex of the Transantarctic Mountains. The sedimentary rocks of the Beacon Supergroup that uncon-formably overlie the basement rocks elsewhere in the Transantarctic Mountains do not occur in the Thiel Mountains either because they have been removed by erosion or because they were not deposited there. The stratigraphy of the basement rocks of the Thiel Mountains in Table 8.1 is deceptively simple compared to the basement rocks elsewhere in the Transantarctic Mountains (e.g., the Queen Maud Mountains and the Wisconsin Range). 

The Fremouw Formation is widely distributed in the central Transantarctic Mountains and occurs in the Queen Alexandra and Queen Ehzabeth ranges as well in the Dominion and Supporters ranges at the head of the Beardmore Glacier (McGregor 1965a, b). In addition, Collinson and Elliot (1984) mapped the Fremouw Formation in the Shackleton Glacier area of the Queen Maud Mountains. Barrett et al. (1986) estimated that the total thickness of the Fremouw Formation lies between 670 and 800 m. 

The observations by Coates (1985) were confirmed and elaborated by Isbell et al. (2008) in the most recent summary of the Permian glaciation of the Transantarctic Mountains. The cross-section of Isbell et al. (2008) drawn parallel to the strike of the Transantarctic Mountains in Fig. 11.5 clearly shows the thinning of the tillite in the Queen Maud Mountains and the thickening of the section in the areas of the Beardmore-Nimrod glaciers and in the Ohio Range. 

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