Mount Achernar () is a

peak Peak or The Peak may refer to: Basic meanings Geology * Mountain peak ** Pyramidal peak, a mountaintop that has been sculpted by erosion to form a point Mathematics * Peak hour or rush hour, in traffic congestion * Peak (geometry), an (''n''-3)-di ...

forming the northeast end of the

MacAlpine Hills MacAlpine Hills () are a chain of mainly ice-free, bluff-type hills in Antarctica, extending from Mount Achernar southwestwards along the south side of Law Glacier, to Sylwester Glacier. They were named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Name ...

, on the south side of

Law Glacier Lennox-King Glacier is a large valley glacier, about long, draining Bowden Névé and flowing northeast between the Holland Range and the Queen Alexandra Range of Antarctica to enter Richards Inlet, Ross Ice Shelf. It was named by the New Zealand ...

. Named by the

New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition The New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition (NZGSAE) describes a series of scientific explorations of the continent Antarctica. The expeditions were notably active throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Features named by the expeditions 1957 ...

(NZGSAE) (1961–62) after the star

Achernar Achernar is the brightest star in the constellation of Eridanus, and the ninth-brightest in the night sky. It has the Bayer designation Alpha Eridani, which is Latinized from α Eridani and abbreviated Alpha Eri or α Eri. The name A ...

used in fixing the survey baseline.AntacrticaStewart, J., 2011. ''Antarctica: An Encyclopedia,'' 2nd ed. Jefferson, North Carolina and London, McFarland & Company, Inc. 1771 pp.

Late Permian buried forest

Mount Achernar consists of the deeply eroded and glacially sculptured

beds A bed is an item of furniture that is used as a place to sleep, rest, and relax. Most modern beds consist of a soft, cushioned mattress on a bed frame. The mattress rests either on a solid base, often wood slats, or a sprung base. Many be ...

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

siltstone Siltstone, also known as aleurolite, is a clastic sedimentary rock that is composed mostly of silt. It is a form of mudrock with a low clay mineral content, which can be distinguished from shale by its lack of fissility.Blatt ''et al.'' 1980, p ...

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4) and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especial ...

, and

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

of the Buckley Formation of the

Beacon Supergroup The Beacon Supergroup is a geological formation exposed in Antarctica and deposited from the Devonian to the Triassic (). The unit was originally described as either a formation or sandstone, and upgraded to group and supergroup as time passed. It ...

. Exposed by the slopes of this mountain is a well known and studied late

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Paleoz ...

buried forest consisting of numerous in situ

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

tree stumps. These silicified stumps are up to and height and in growth position. The

tree ring Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, the study of climate and atmos ...

s on these stumps are well-preserved and exhibit narrow zones of latewood that represent a young, rapidly growing forest at latitudes of about 80° to 85 °S. These trees are interpreted to represent a forest growing at the time that the climate was warm because of the wide growth rings, lack of frost rings, and the

deciduous In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

nature of

Glossopteris ''Glossopteris'' tymology: from Ancient Greek γλῶσσα (glôssa, " tongue ") + πτερίς (pterís, " fern ")is the largest and best-known genus of the extinct Permian order of seed ferns known as Glossopteridales (also known as Arberia ...

.Cúneo, N.R., Isbell, J., Taylor, E.L. and Taylor, T.N., 1993. ''The Glossopteris flora from Antarctica: taphonomy and paleoecology.'' ''Comptes Rendus XII ICC-P'', 2, pp.13-40.Taylor, E.L., Taylor, T.N. and Cúneo, N.R., 1992. ''The present is not the key to the past: a polar forest from the Permian of Antarctica.'' ''Science'', 257(5077), pp.1675-1677.Ryberg, P.E., Taylor, E.L. and Taylor, T.N., 2012. ''Antarctic glossopterid diversity on a local scale: the presence of multiple megasporophyll genera, Upper Permian, Mt. Achernar, Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica.'' ''American Journal of Botany'', 99(9), pp.1531-1540.

Go see

Gordon Valley Gordon Valley () is a small valley, the western half of which is occupied by a lobe of ice from Walcott Neve, lying west of Mount Falla in the Queen Alexandra Range, Antarctica. It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names after Mark A ...

buried forest

References

Paleontological sites of Antarctica Mountains of the Ross Dependency Shackleton Coast {{ShackletonCoast-geo-stub