Uncharted permian to jurassic continental deposits in the far north of victoria land, east antarctica

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by The Geological Society of London. All rights reserved.The remote lower reaches of the Rennick Glacier in the far north of Victoria Land hold some of the least-explored outcrop areas of the Transantarctic basin system. Following recent international field-work effor...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Geological Society
Main Authors: Bomfleur, Benjamin, Mörs, Thomas, Unverfärth, Jan, Liu, Feng, Läufer, Andreas, Castillo, Paula, Oh, Changhwan, Park, Tae-Yoon S., Woo, Jusun, Crispini, Laura
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:unknown
Published: Geological Society of London 2021
Subjects:
CENTRAL TRANSANTARCTIC MOUNTAINS
BRAIDED RIVER DEPOSIT
BEACON SUPERGROUP
TRIASSIC BOUNDARY
AGE CONSTRAINTS
ASSEMBLAGES
STRATIGRAPHY
GONDWANA
FOSSILS
GEOLOGY
East Antarctica
Victoria Land
Transantarctic Mountains
Rennick
Rennick Glacier
Section Peak
Van der Hoeven
Helliwell Hills
Antarc*
Antarctica
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10371/197852
https://doi.org/10.1144/jgs2020-062
Description
Summary:© 2020 The Author(s). Published by The Geological Society of London. All rights reserved.The remote lower reaches of the Rennick Glacier in the far north of Victoria Land hold some of the least-explored outcrop areas of the Transantarctic basin system. Following recent international field-work efforts in the Helliwell Hills, we here provide a comprehensive emendation to the regional stratigraphy. Results of geological and palaeontological reconnaissance and of petrographic, geochemical and palynostratigraphic analyses reveal a stack of three previously unknown sedimentary units in the study area: the Lower Triassic Van der Hoeven Formation (new unit, 115+ m thick) consists mainly of quartzose sandstone and non-carbonaceous mudstone rich in continental trace fossils. The Middle to Upper Triassic Helliwell Formation (new unit, 235 m thick) consists of coal-bearing overbank deposits and volcaniclastic sandstone and yielded typical plant fossils of the Gondwanan Dicroidium flora together with plant-bearing silicified peat. The succession is capped by c. 14 m of the sandstone-dominated Section Peak Formation (uppermost Triassic–Lower Jurassic). Our results enable more detailed correlation of the Palaeozoic–Mesozoic successions throughout East Antarctica and into Tasmania. Of particular interest is one section that spans the end-Permian mass extinction interval, which promises to allow detailed reconstructions of high-latitude vegetation dynamics across this critical interval in Earth history. N 1

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