Cape Geology is a low, gravel-covered point marking the western limit of Botany Bay, in the southern part of

Granite Harbour Granite Harbour () is a bay in the coast of Victoria Land, Antarctica, about long, entered between Cape Archer and Cape Roberts. It was discovered and named by the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901–04) in the ''Discovery Discovery ...

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. I ...

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 ...

. It was charted and named by the Western Geological Party of the

Terra Nova Expedition The ''Terra Nova'' Expedition, officially the British Antarctic Expedition, was an expedition to Antarctica which took place between 1910 and 1913. Led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the expedition had various scientific and geographical objec ...

(1910–13) who established their base there.

Historic site

The rock shelter known as Granite House was built in 1911, for use as a

field kitchen A field kitchen is a mobile kitchen, mobile canteens or food truck used primarily by militaries to provide warm food to the troops near the frontline or in temporary encampments. Description The first field kitchens were carried in four-wh ...

, by

Griffith Taylor Thomas Griffith "Grif" Taylor (1 December 1880 – 5 November 1963) was an English-born geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. He was a survivor of Captain Robert Scott's Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica (1910–1913). Taylor was a se ...

’s second

geological Geology () is a branch of natural science concerned with Earth and other astronomical objects, the features or rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change over time. Modern geology significantly overlaps all other E ...

excursion in the course of the Terra Nova expedition. It was enclosed on three sides with

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...

boulder walls and used a

sled A sled, skid, sledge, or sleigh is a land vehicle that slides across a surface, usually of ice or snow. It is built with either a smooth underside or a separate body supported by two or more smooth, relatively narrow, longitudinal runners ...

to support a

sealskin Sealskin is the skin of a seal. Seal skins have been used by aboriginal people for millennia to make waterproof jackets and boots, and seal fur to make fur coats. Sailors used to have tobacco pouches made from sealskin. Canada, Greenland, Norwa ...

roof. The stone walls of the shelter have partly collapsed. It contains the corroded remains of tins, a sealskin and some cord. The sled lies 50 m seaward of the shelter and consists of a few scattered pieces of wood, straps and buckles. The site has been designated a Historic Site or Monument (HSM 67), following a proposal by New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom to the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting.

Flora and fauna

Together, Cape Geology and Botany Bay form a botanical refuge that is exceptionally rich for such a high latitude location, with an abundance and diversity of moss and lichen species that is unique for southern Victoria Land. There are also abundant growths of algae, large populations of

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s (including

springtail Springtails (Collembola) form the largest of the three lineages of modern hexapods that are no longer considered insects (the other two are the Protura and Diplura). Although the three orders are sometimes grouped together in a class called Ento ...

mite Mites are small arachnids (eight-legged arthropods). Mites span two large orders of arachnids, the Acariformes and the Parasitiformes, which were historically grouped together in the subclass Acari, but genetic analysis does not show clear e ...

s, nematodes and rotifers) and a

colony In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state' ...

of over 40 pairs of

south polar skua The south polar skua (''Stercorarius maccormicki'') is a large seabird in the skua family, Stercorariidae. An older name for the bird is MacCormick's skua, after explorer and naval surgeon Robert McCormick, who first collected the type specimen. ...

s. The area is the type locality for both the lichen '' Caloplaca coeruleofrigida'' Sochting and the collembolan '' Gomphiocephalus hodgsoni'' Carpenter. The site is protected under the Antarctic Treaty System as Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) No.154.

References

Geology, Cape Scott Coast Antarctic Specially Protected Areas Historic Sites and Monuments of Antarctica {{ScottCoast-geo-stub