Victoria University Antarctic Research Expedition Science and Logistics Reports 1984-85: VUWAE 29
Background
Background
Seismic surveys over the last decade (Northey et al., 1975; Davey and Bennett, 1981; Wong and Christoffel, 1981),have revealed along the Victoria Land coast a sedimentary basin (Fig. 1) of probable post-Jurassic age, the margins of which are accessible to shallow offshore drilling. The structure of the western margin of the basin in South Victoria Land is shown in figure 2. The MSSTS 1 core has shown that the uppermost strata (to 226 m sub-bottom) are of marine glacial character (Barrett and McKelvey, 1981), and extend back to 30 m.y. (Harwood, 1984).
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Figure 1. The Ross Sea region showing the location of the Victoria Land basin and the area of CIROS drilling (Fig. 2)
The second hole in the first phase (CIROS 2) was to be drilled as far landward as the ice in Ferrar Valley would permit. This hole was to core the sediment deposited on the valley floor to basement to work out the glacial history of the valley and also to obtain a minimum age on the cutting of the valley from the sediment just above the basement. In addition, the core was expected to contain reference planes to correlate with CIROS 1 and hence allow us to gauge the timing and extent of vertical movement within the fault zone between the two sites. The basement core was also of interest for it would be the lowest sample obtained to date for apatite fission-track dating, and hence provide the youngest possible point on the uplift curve for this section of the Transantarctic Mountains.