Plant Material from the Miers Bluff Formation of the South Shetland Islands

• Main Author: Schopf, James M.
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Research Foundation and the Institute of Polar Studies, The Ohio State University 1973
• Subjects: Plant microfossil studies; Miers Bluff Formation; South Shetland Islands; Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Croft; Hobbs; Legoupil; Livingston Island; Miers; Miers Bluff; The Antarctic; Trinity Peninsula; Antarc*
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1811/51284

Poorly preserved plant material from the Miers Bluff Formation of Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands group, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, has been made available from collections of Dr. Ian Dalziel of Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Columbia University. The Miers Bluff Formation, a quartzose graywacke and shale sequence, has been tentatively correlated by Hobbs with the Trinity Peninsula Series of the Antarctic Peninsula. The Trinity Peninsula Series has been dated as Carboniferous(?) on the basis of an unpublished report by W. N. Croft and palynologic studies by Grikurov and Dibner. The Miers Bluff Formation also shows close lithologic resemblance to the Legoupil Formation (Lower Cretaceous) from an adjacent area on the Antarctic Peninsula. Examination of the poorly preserved material contained in rocks of the Miers Bluff Formation of Livingston Island is reported here in detail. This material provides scant evidence for age determination, but will serve as a basis for comparison with similar material from Antarctic areas having similar rocks.