Mount Kirkpatrick is a lofty, generally ice-free mountain in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

Queen Alexandra Range The Queen Alexandra Range is a major mountain range of the Transantarctic Mountains System, located in the Ross Dependency region of Antarctica. It is about long, bordering the entire western side of Beardmore Glacier from the Polar Plateau to ...

. Located 8 km (5 mi) west of Mount Dickerson, Mount Kirkpatrick is the highest point in the

, as well as in its parent range, the

Transantarctic Mountains The Transantarctic Mountains (abbreviated TAM) comprise a mountain range of uplifted (primarily sedimentary) rock in Antarctica which extend, with some interruptions, across the continent from Cape Adare in northern Victoria Land to Coats Land. ...

. Discovered and named by the British Antarctic Expedition (1907–1909), the mountain was named for a

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

businessman, who was one of the original supporters of the expedition. ''Mount Kilpatrick'' is an alternate name for this mountain.

Mount Kirkpatrick as a fossil site

Mount Kirkpatrick holds one of the most important fossil sites in Antarctica, the

Hanson Formation The Hanson Formation (also known as the Shafer Peak Formation) is a geologic formation on Mount Kirkpatrick and north Victoria Land, Antarctica. It is one of the two major dinosaur-bearing rock groups found on Antarctica to date; the other is the ...

. Because Antarctica used to be warmer and supported dense conifer and

cycad Cycads are seed plants that typically have a stout and woody (ligneous) trunk with a crown of large, hard, stiff, evergreen and (usually) pinnate leaves. The species are dioecious, that is, individual plants of a species are either male o ...

forest, and because all the continents were fused into a giant supercontinent called

Pangaea Pangaea or Pangea () was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million y ...

, many ancient Antarctic wildlife share relatives elsewhere in the world. Among these creatures are tritylodonts, herbivorous

mammal-like reptile Pelycosaur ( ) is an older term for basal or primitive Late Paleozoic synapsids, excluding the therapsids and their descendants. Previously, the term ''mammal-like reptile'' had been used, and pelycosaur was considered an order, but this is now ...

s that are prevalent elsewhere at the time. A

crow A crow is a bird of the genus '' Corvus'', or more broadly a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. Crows are generally black in colour. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not pinned scientifica ...

-sized

pterosaur Pterosaurs (; from Greek ''pteron'' and ''sauros'', meaning "wing lizard") is an extinct clade of flying reptiles in the order, Pterosauria. They existed during most of the Mesozoic: from the Late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous (228 ...

has been identified. In addition to these finds, numerous

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

remains have been uncovered. Fossils of dinosaurs resembling ''

Plateosaurus ''Plateosaurus'' (probably meaning "broad lizard", often mistranslated as "flat lizard") is a genus of plateosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic period, around 214 to 204 million years ago, in what is now Central and Northern Eur ...

'', ''

Coelophysis ''Coelophysis'' ( traditionally; or , as heard more commonly in recent decades) is an extinct genus of coelophysid theropod dinosaur that lived approximately 228 to 201.3 million years ago during the latter part of the Triassic Period fro ...

'', and ''

Dilophosaurus ''Dilophosaurus'' ( ) is a genus of theropod dinosaurs that lived in what is now North America during the Early Jurassic, about 193 million years ago. Three skeletons were discovered in northern Arizona in 1940, and the two best preserve ...

'' were excavated. Mount Kirkpatrick holds the first dinosaur scientifically named on the continent: the large predatory ''

Cryolophosaurus ''Cryolophosaurus'' ( or ; "CRY-oh-loaf-oh-SAWR-us") is a genus of large theropod dinosaur known from only a single species ''Cryolophosaurus ellioti'', from the early Jurassic of Antarctica. It was one of the largest theropods of the Early Jura ...

''. In 2004, scientists have even found partial remains of a large sauropod plant-eating dinosaur. '' Glacialisaurus hammeri'', an herbivorous dinosaur thought to be around long and weighing perhaps 4-6 tons, was also identified from fossils on Mount Kirkpatrick in 2007, the only known site of ''Glacialisaurus hammeri''.Science Daily 12 December 2007
/ref>

References

Mountains of the Ross Dependency Four-thousanders of Antarctica Mount Kirkpatrick Mount Kirkpatrick {{ShackletonCoast-geo-stub

Mount Kirkpatrick as a fossil site

See also

References