The Ross Sea is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica, between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land and within the Ross Embayment, and is the southernmost sea on Earth. It derives its name from the British explorer James Clark Ross who visited this area in 1841. To the west of the sea lies Ross Island and Victoria Land, to the east Roosevelt Island and Edward VII Peninsula in Marie Byrd Land, while the southernmost part is covered by the Ross Ice Shelf, and is about 200 miles (320 km) from the South Pole. Its boundaries and area have been defined by the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research as having an area of 637,000 square kilometres (246,000 sq mi).
Marie Byrd Land (MBL) is an unclaimed region of Antarctica. With an area of 1,610,000 km2 (620,000 sq mi), it is the largest unclaimed territory on Earth. It was named after the wife of American naval officer Richard E. Byrd, who explored the region in the early 20th century.
West Antarctica, or Lesser Antarctica, one of the two major regions of Antarctica, is the part of that continent that lies within the Western Hemisphere, and includes the Antarctic Peninsula. It is separated from East Antarctica by the Transantarctic Mountains and is covered by the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. It lies between the Ross Sea, and the Weddell Sea. It may be considered a giant peninsula, stretching from the South Pole towards the tip of South America.
The Fosdick Mountains are an east–west trending mountain range with marked serrate outlines, standing along the south side of Balchen Glacier at the head of Block Bay, in the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica.
Cape Colbeck is a prominent ice-covered cape which forms the northwestern extremity of the Edward VII Peninsula and Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica. It was discovered in January 1902 by the British National Antarctic Expedition and named for Captain William Colbeck, Royal Naval Reserve, who commanded Robert Scott's relief ship, the Morning.
The West Antarctic Rift System is a series of rift valleys between East and West Antarctica. It encompasses the Ross Embayment, the Ross Sea, the area under the Ross Ice Shelf and a part of Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica, reaching to the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. It has an estimated length of 3,000 km (1,900 mi) and a width of approximately 700 km (430 mi). Its evolution is due to lithospheric thinning of an area of Antarctica that resulted in the demarcation of East and West Antarctica. The scale and evolution of the rift system has been compared to that of the Basin and Range Province of the Western United States.
The geology of Antarctica covers the geological development of the continent through the Archean, Proterozoic and Phanerozoic eons.
The Billboard is a massive granite monolith in the Sarnoff Mountains of the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica, standing just west of Mount Rea between Arthur Glacier and Boyd Glacier. It was discovered in November 1934 by a Second Byrd Antarctic Expedition (1933–35) sledge party under Paul Siple, and is so named because of its form and appearance with vertical faces rising above the continental ice.
Mount Iphigene ; a mountain just west of Ochs Glacier between Marujupu Peak and Birchall Peaks, in the Fosdick Mountains, Ford Ranges, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. It is composed of Fosdick Metamorphic Rocks migmatite and granite of Cretaceous age. Its peak elevation is estimated at 1080 m. Discovered in 1929 by the Byrd Antarctic Expedition, they are named by Byrd for Iphigene Ochs Sulzberger, daughter of Adolph Ochs and wife of Arthur Sulzberger, patrons of the expedition.
The Phillips Mountains are a range of mountains on the north side of Balchen Glacier and Block Bay in the Ford Ranges, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica.
Thompson Ridge is a rock ridge, 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) long and trending north–south on the south shore of Block Bay, 2.1 nautical miles (3.5 km) northwest of Mount Luyendyk, Fosdick Mountains in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. It is composed wholly of Fosdick Metamorphic Rocks. These are determined to be of Cretaceous age.
The East Antarctic Shield or Craton is a cratonic rock body that covers 10.2 million square kilometers or roughly 73% of the continent of Antarctica. The shield is almost entirely buried by the East Antarctic Ice Sheet that has an average thickness of 2200 meters but reaches up to 4700 meters in some locations. East Antarctica is separated from West Antarctica by the 100–300 kilometer wide Transantarctic Mountains, which span nearly 3,500 kilometers from the Weddell Sea to the Ross Sea. The East Antarctic Shield is then divided into an extensive central craton that occupies most of the continental interior and various other marginal cratons that are exposed along the coast.
Terry Jean Wilson is an international leader in the study of present-day tectonics in Antarctica. She has led large, international efforts, such as Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET), to investigate the interactions between the Earth's crust and the cryosphere in Antarctica.
Robin Elizabeth Bell is Palisades Geophysical Institute (PGI) Lamont Research Professor at Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory and a past President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2019–2021. Dr. Bell was influential in co-ordinating the 2007 International Polar Year and was the first woman to chair the National Academy of Sciences Polar Research Board. She has made numerous important discoveries with regard to subglacial lakes and ice sheet dynamics, and has a ridge, called Bell Buttress, in Antarctica named after her.
Julie Michelle Palais is an American polar glaciologist who has made significant contributions to climate change research studying volcanic fallout in ice cores from both Greenland and Antarctica. For many years, starting in 1990, she played a pivotal role working at the National Science Foundation (NSF) as Program Director of the Antarctic Glaciology Program in the Division of Polar Programs, including many trips to both North and South Polar regions. Both the Palais Glacier and Palais Bluff in Antarctica were named in her honor and she has received many further recognitions for her distinguished career.
Mount Luyendyk is a summit in the western Fosdick Mountains of the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land, West Antarctica. It forms a prominent exposure in the northwestern Iphigene massif. The peak is named in recognition of Bruce P. Luyendyk, professor (emeritus), University of California, Santa Barbara, who was active in ground- and ocean-based Antarctic research from 1989 to 2015, significantly advancing the scientific knowledge of the Ross Embayment region of Antarctica. Luyendyk led two on-land expeditions in the Ford Ranges, and was principal investigator for five marine geophysical expeditions in the Ross Sea.
Bruce Peter Luyendyk is an American geophysicist and oceanographer, currently professor emeritus of marine geophysics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work spans marine geology of the major ocean basins, the tectonics of southern California, marine hydrocarbon seeps, and the tectonics and paleoclimate of Antarctica. His research includes tectonic rotations of the California Transverse Ranges, participation in the discovery of deep-sea hydrothermal vents, quantitative studies of marine hydrocarbon seeps, and geologic exploration of the Ford Ranges in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica.
The Ross Embayment is a large region of Antarctica, comprising the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea, that lies between East and West Antarctica.
Anne Grunow is a senior research scientist at Ohio State University in the Byrd Polar Research Center. She is also the current director of the Polar Rock Repository. Grunow is a geologist specializing in Antarctic tectonics, with her research using methods from geochronology and paleomagnetism.
Kirsteen Jane Tinto is a glaciologist known for her research on the behavior and subglacial geology of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
