A note on the ice sheet fluctuations and problems of Cenozoic studies in Antarctica

• Main Author: Yoshio Yoshida
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: National Institute of Polar Research 1985
• Subjects: McMurdo Sound; Sirius; Antarc*; Antarctica; Ice Sheet; Memoirs of National Institute of Polar Research; Polar Research
• Online Access: https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=1793; http://id.nii.ac.jp/1291/00001793/; https://nipr.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_action_common_download&item_id=1793&item_no=1&attribute_id=18&file_no=1

This note outlines briefly the present state of research on some aspects of glacial history in Antarctica and attempts to compare chronologically the glacial events in several regions of Antarctica with one another as the basis for future investigations. Investigations on the ice sheet fluctuations have been carried out in many regions of Antarctica, and important results are being accumulated. In particular, the history of glacial events is considerably well-known in the McMurdo Sound region, and studies in other regions often refer to it for chronological arrangement. It seems still difficult, however, to correlate glacial events precisely among the respective regions, mainly due to the scarcity of reliable age determination data. Tentative correlations can only be made by comparison of "phase" of fluctuations, taking notice of specific events seemingly common to most of the regions. Difficulty arises also from the obscurity in time- and spatial-scale of events. In this connection, more efforts should be made to investigate regional characteristics of the events and their relations to those of a continental scale. On that occasion, the finding of marine microfossils in the Sirius Formation, above all, compels us to reexamine the glacial history which has been more or less compiled in each region.