Vega Island is a small island to the northwest of James Ross Island, on the

Antarctic Peninsula The Antarctic Peninsula, known as O'Higgins Land in Chile and Tierra de San Martín in Argentina, and originally as Graham Land in the United Kingdom and the Palmer Peninsula in the United States, is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctic ...

. It is separated from James Ross Island by

Herbert Sound Herbert Sound is a Sound (geography), sound in Antarctica extending from Cape Lachman and Keltie Head on the northwest to the narrows between The Naze (Antarctica), The Naze and False Island Point on the southeast, separating Vega Island from James ...

. The island was named by

Otto Nordenskjold Otto is a masculine German given name and a surname. It originates as an Old High German short form (variants ''Audo'', ''Odo'', ''Udo'') of Germanic names beginning in ''aud-'', an element meaning "wealth, prosperity". The name is recorded fro ...

, leader of the Swedish Antarctic Expedition (1901–04) in honour of the ship making the first voyage through the

Northeast Passage The Northeast Passage (abbreviated as NEP) is the shipping route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Russia. The western route through the islands of Canada is accordingly called the Northwest Passage (N ...

, 1878-79. Vega Island is an important site for paleontology. The region is extremely rich in terrestrial and marine fossils which span the boundary of the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, covering the point in time when dinosaurs became extinct. Fossils found on the island include hadrosaurs, plesiosaurs, and

mosasaurs Mosasaurs (from Latin ''Mosa'' meaning the 'Meuse', and Greek ' meaning 'lizard') comprise a group of extinct, large marine reptiles from the Late Cretaceous. Their first fossil remains were discovered in a limestone quarry at Maastricht on the ...

Geography

The island is a rare volcano type called a móberg, or tuya, which was formed by a three-stage eruption sequence below an ice cap. Stage one was a subglacial

hyaloclastic Hyaloclastite is a volcanoclastic accumulation or breccia consisting of glass (from the Greek ''hyalus'') fragments (clasts) formed by quench fragmentation of lava flow surfaces during submarine or subglacial extrusion. It occurs as thin margin ...

eruption, which shattered the lava into glass, ash, and sand which has since weathered to yellow palagonite layers. The second phase was a lava eruption into a meltwater glacial lake contained in the ice cap, which resulted in volcanic breccia and basalt pillow lava. The final phase was subaerial basalt lava flows on top of the previous volcanic deposits after the lake drained or boiled away. The basalt flows form a caprock along the northwest shore, which forms an impermeable layer that results in about sixty waterfalls on warm days.

References

* *{{cite news, title=New Dinosaur Finds in Antarctica Paint Fuller Picture of Past Ecosystem, url=https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102864&org=olpa&from=news, agency=National Science Foundation, date=February 6, 1998

External links

Antarctic Researchers to Discuss Difficult Recovery of Unique Juvenile Plesiosaur Fossil
from the National Science Foundation, December 6, 2006.
Rocas hipabisales del grupo volcánico James Ross, Isla Vega
(Spanish) Paleontological sites of Antarctica Argentine Antarctica British Antarctic Territory Chilean Antarctic Territory Islands of the James Ross Island group

Geography

See also

References

External links