The Eureka Spurs () are several rock spurs exposed along the east side of the head of

Mariner Glacier Mariner Glacier is a major glacier over long, descending southeast from the plateau of Victoria Land, between Mountaineer Range and Malta Plateau, and terminating at Lady Newnes Bay, Ross Sea, where it forms the floating Mariner Glacier Tongue. ...

, southwest of Mount McCarthy, in

Victoria Land Victoria Land is a region in eastern Antarctica which fronts the western side of the Ross Sea and the Ross Ice Shelf, extending southward from about 70°30'S to 78°00'S, and westward from the Ross Sea to the edge of the Antarctic Plateau. It ...

. They were so named, after the

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

word

eureka Eureka (often abbreviated as E!, or Σ!) is an intergovernmental organisation for research and development funding and coordination. Eureka is an open platform for international cooperation in innovation. Organisations and companies applying th ...

, by the

Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition The Antarctic Research Centre (ARC) is part of the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. Its mission is to research "Antarctic climate history and processes, and their influence on the global clima ...

field party to

Evans Neve Rennick Glacier is broad glacier, nearly long, which is one of the largest in Antarctica. It rises on the polar plateau westward of Mesa Range and is wide, narrowing to near the coast. It takes its name from Rennick Bay where the glacier reaches ...

, 1971–72, on the occasion of fossil discoveries made in the area. Thick sections of

sedimentary Sedimentary rocks are types of rock (geology), rock that are formed by the accumulation or deposition of mineral or organic matter, organic particles at Earth#Surface, Earth's surface, followed by cementation (geology), cementation. Sedimentati ...

strata In geology and related fields, a stratum ( : strata) is a layer of rock or sediment characterized by certain lithologic properties or attributes that distinguish it from adjacent layers from which it is separated by visible surfaces known as ei ...

of the Spurs Formation are exposed in Eureka Spurs. These outcrops exposed Cambrian submarine channel-fills in the Spurs Formation that exhibit unique meter-scale sedimentary cyclic layers of

breccia Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or rocks cemented together by a fine-grained matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language, in which it means "rubble". A breccia may have a variety of di ...

and

diamictite Diamictite (; from Ancient Greek ''δια'' (dia-): ''through'' and ''µεικτός'' (meiktós): ''mixed'') is a type of lithified sedimentary rock that consists of nonsorted to poorly sorted terrigenous sediment containing particles that ra ...

.Kim, Y.H.G., Woo, J., Park, T.Y.S., Kihm, J.H., Lee, J.I. and Choe, M.Y., 2018. ''Sedimentary breccia and diamictite of the Cambrian Spurs Formation in northern Victoria Land, Antarctica: two kinds of debris flows in a submarine channel system'' ''Antarctic Science'', 30(4), pp.245-263. In addition, these outcrops have yielded rare, identifiable fossils, including trilobites, that typically are absent in lower

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

sedimentary strata in Victoria Land.Jago, J.B., Bentley, C.J. and Cooper, R.A., 2019. ''Cambrian biostratigraphy of the Bowers back-arc basin, Northern Victoria Land, Antarctica—A review.'' ''Palaeoworld'', 28(3), pp.276-288.

References

Paleontological sites of Antarctica Ridges of Victoria Land Borchgrevink Coast {{BorchgrevinkCoast-geo-stub

See also

References