Vega Island is a small island to the northwest of

James Ross Island James Ross Island is a large island off the southeast side and near the northeastern extremity of the Antarctic Peninsula, from which it is separated by Prince Gustav Channel. Rising to , it is irregularly shaped and extends in a north–south ...

, 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 f ...

, leader of the

Swedish Antarctic Expedition The Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1901–1903 was a scientific expedition led by Otto Nordenskjöld and Carl Anton Larsen. It was the first Swedish endeavour to Antarctica in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Background Otto Nordensk ...

(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 The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

and

Tertiary Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...

periods, covering the point in time when dinosaurs became extinct. Fossils found on the island include

hadrosaurs Hadrosaurids (), or duck-billed dinosaurs, are members of the ornithischian family Hadrosauridae. This group is known as the duck-billed dinosaurs for the flat duck-bill appearance of the bones in their snouts. The ornithopod family, which includ ...

plesiosaurs The Plesiosauria (; Greek: πλησίος, ''plesios'', meaning "near to" and ''sauros'', meaning "lizard") or plesiosaurs are an order or clade of extinct Mesozoic marine reptiles, belonging to the Sauropterygia. Plesiosaurs first appeared ...

, 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 th ...

Geography

The island is a rare volcano type called a móberg, or

tuya A tuya is a flat-topped, steep-sided volcano formed when lava erupts through a thick glacier or ice sheet. They are rare worldwide, being confined to regions which were covered by glaciers and had active volcanism during the same period. As lava ...

, 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 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

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanite, aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the planetary surface, surface of a terrestrial ...

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