Wright Valley, Southern Victoria Land Antarctica

Calkin PE, BehUng RE, Bull C (1970) Glacial history of Wright Valley, southern Victoria Land, Antarctica Antarctic J US 5(l) 22-27... 

Jones LM, Faure G (1967) Origin of salts in Lake Vanda, Wright Valley, southern Victoria Land, Antarctica. Earth Planet Sci Lett 3 101-106... 

The geologists who accompanied Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton to Antarctica were amazed when they entered the mountains of southern Victoria Land and discovered the ice-free valleys such as Wright Valley in Fig. 10.1 (Sections 1.4, 2.3, and 3.1). The modem traveler entering the ice-free valleys by helicopter from McMurdo is similarly affected because the wide U-shaped valleys present a familiar view of sandy plains dotted with lakes and ponds filled with liquid water and of meltwater streams that flow from alpine glaciers descending from the high mountain ranges that frame these valleys. 

The crustal characteristics of the Jurassic doler-ites of Antarctica and Tasmania relate these rocks to each other and set them apart from Jurassic dolerite in southern Africa and Brazil. This point was emphasized by Compston et al. (1968) in a direct comparison of Rb-Sr systematics of Mesozoic basaltic rocks in southern Victoria Land, Tasmania, South Africa, and South America. In addition, these authors reported K-Ar dates for plagioclase and pyroxene from a pegmatoid in the Lake Vanda sill in Wright Valley of southern Victoria Land. The results indicated a Middle Jurassic age for the Ferrar Dolerite, in agreement with the age of the Tasmanian Dolerite and the K-Ar dates of the Wisanger Basalt on Kangaroo Island of South Australia reported later by McDougall and Wellman (1976). 

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