Unraveling the History Beneath the Ice

By JOHN GOODGE

John GoodgePulling
samples by sled up a blue-ice slope to the Twin Otter parked on the rise. The mountains of the Queen Elizabeth Range
are actually some 25 kilometers away beyond the Nimrod Glacier, out of view.

Wednesday, Dec. 22

We are back in the Miller Range, where I started my Antarctic research. It is great to be back,
working with some of the oldest rocks in Antarctica, and certainly the oldest in the entire length
of the Transantarctic Mountains. Exposures of rocks in the Miller Range, and its nearby
companion, the Geologists Range, are like a window through the edge of the ice sheet into the old
continental crust below. Collectively, they are known as the Nimrod Group.

After our put-in to a remote campsite here (see the earlier post from Jeff Vervoort on some of the
special challenges when we got here), we got to work right away on the local outcrops.
Metamorphic and igneous rocks here show extremely complex structure, which represents a
geologic history told in many chapters. As geologists, one of our joys in the field is to puzzle over
outcrops like these, trying to unravel the history piece by piece, from oldest to youngest event.
 John GoodgeDylan Taylor examining some of the metamorphic gneisses at Camp
Ridge.

JOHN GOODGE AND JEFF VERVOORT

Previous Posts

 On the Trail of Antarctica’s Geological Secrets

 For First-Timer, an Icy Challenge
 Snowing in Antarctica
 Airplanes and Helicopters on an Icy Runway
 Katabatic Winds of Antarctica
 Life in the Deep Field

Because we weren’t here when these rocks formed, we have to mentally reverse the geologic
processes, much like an investigator at an accident scene reconstructing a sequence of events
from fragmentary evidence. From previous work on layered gneisses exposed at a place called
Camp Ridge, they include gray gneisses dating to three billion years ago, dark-colored high-
pressure relicts formed about 1.7 billion years ago, and light-colored veins formed from melts
about 500 million years ago. Together, these rocks have a colorful pedigree.

Getting to the outcrop involves a bone-jarring trip by snowmobile over hard mounds of
windblown snow called sastrugi, and often over wind-sculptured blue ice, which rattles the skis of
the Ski-Doos as they chatter over the uneven surface. There is nothing fast about Ski-Doo travel
here. One day we covered nine miles in about two hours. Once you get to the outcrop, however,
the rewards are great. Despite the cold and the difficulty in keeping your geologic tools sorted
with all your clothing, the benefit to working in Antarctica is the lack of soil, vegetation and
lichens — nothing but bare rock!
 Jeff VervoortThe wind-
sculptured surface of blue ice near Lonewolf Nunatak.

Doing science in Antarctica provides a great opportunity to work with a variety of colleagues —
for safety we always work in groups, and because one person can’t be expert in everything, it is a
real advantage to add new ways of looking at a problem. I’ve worked with Mark Fanning on these
rocks for about 15 years, but it’s the first time he has been able to observe them in outcrop, which
gives him more in-depth context for the origin of the samples we have analyzed. Jeff Vervoort
brings an entirely new type of expertise to these rocks, and with lively discussion on the outcrop,
new samples and new approaches, I think we are likely to uncover fresh chapters in their ancient
history.

One of the big problems we face in probing this history is trying to peer through a geologic
“shroud” formed by the thorough deformation and metamorphism these rocks experienced
during the most recent big geologic event, the Ross Orogeny (orogenesis is the term used to
describe mountain-building events like the one that created the Alps). Informally, we say they
have been “hosed over.” The deformation and metamorphism create an overprint that masks the
record of earlier events. With isotopic tools that Mark and Jeff can provide, we hope to get past
this time barrier and piece together a sequence of events in deep geologic time.
 John GoodgeRounded glacial clasts showing striations and grooves formed by
grinding against one another in moving ice.

We have been able to get to most of our target sites already, with a fortuitous string of day trips
taken by snowmobile and Twin Otter fixed-wing. We are mainly after clasts deposited in glacial
moraines, presumably carried in from the ice-covered craton we cannot see. The moraines
contain clasts that are rounded by abrasion against one another in the ice, and they often show
striations and grooves from scraping past one another. From moraine sites near the Miller
Range, we sampled an abundance of igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks, not unlike
those found locally in the Nimrod Group. This is not too surprising, given that these moraines are
within a few kilometers of exposed basement. But we know from previous work that these
moraines contain pieces of rock that have ages unlike anything presently known from outcrop in
the Transantarctic Mountains, which tells us that something else is out there under the ice cap.
Some of the clasts, literally boulders, show the same kind of complexity that we see in outcrop,
with veins of igneous material cutting across older, deformed gneisses. So the moraine clasts
mimic the relationships seen in outcrop.

I was relieved getting back to two sites we have sampled briefly before — one at Lonewolf
Nunataks and the other at Turret Nunatak. Nunatak is an Inuit word that refers to isolated bits of
rocks sticking out of the snow. In Antarctica, the nunataks range from large ridges and small
mountains. Going back to a site raises fears that you won’t see what you found before, or that
maybe you found all there was and there is nothing new to add. At Lonewolf, on the very edge of
Byrd Glacier, we split into two groups. After landing on a glaring surface of ripply blue ice, Mark,
Tanya and I donned our crampons and walked across the ice from the landing site, over a rise
and down into a trough between the Byrd and local outcrop. The Byrd is one of the fastest
glaciers in Antarctica, moving at a couple of meters per day! Crevasses large enough to swallow a
plane attest to this in the middle of the glacier, but near the edge it is relatively solid ice.

As we watched the last of the Byrd disappear behind a large wave of clear ice, we crunched our
way up to dirty bands of ice at the outside edge of the moraine. After just minutes, our “catch of
the day” started piling up near our packs and wooden rock boxes. The three of us kept carrying
back everything of interest we could find, big and small. The bigger job, it turned out, was
sorting, finding out what was different and deciding what to keep. We looked for things unlike
what is known in the local geology and also for rocks we can get information out of with tools like
geochronology (age-dating of rocks) and isotope geochemistry. Jeff and Dylan had left us earlier
with the Twin Otter to find a new site nearby; later that day we learned that their collection was
significantly different in character from ours, meaning that the moraines hold a wealth of
information and that each has the potential to tell a different story.

John GoodgeWind-
sculptured crevasses in the Byrd Glacier near Lonewolf Nunataks.

A day earlier, we had been to Turret Nunatak. When we landed, also on a rippled surface of blue
ice, cupped by a combination of bright sun and wind, we had to descend a steep roll of ice down
to the moraine edge. With cliffs of young dolerite behind it, this moraine seemed an improbable
place to find interesting basement rocks. But indeed, in 2005, we found here a small boulder of
igneous rock that had every conceivable similarity to a distinctive belt of rocks in North America,
which helped confirm a geologic correlation between the two formerly neighboring continents.
The others in the group were rightly skeptical that we would find anything other than local
rockfall, but sure enough we all started finding bits of rock exotic to the geology here. The
moraine wraps around the nunatak, tracing out a strand of material coming from the direction of
the old craton. While others were bringing in new finds, I was pacing across the moraine looking
eagerly for something like the sample, called TNQ, we had worked on before. No luck. As we
headed back to the caching area, our mountaineer Dylan called out that he had found a cool rock,
a porphyritic granite, and a big one at that. I gave him a high five. It’s not exactly like TNQ, but it
and other samples collected that day are sure to add to the story of hidden Precambrian
basement in East Antarctica. Despite my worries, we ended up with a good collection.
 John GoodgePorphyritic
(large crystals) granite from a glacial boulder at Turret Nunatak.

But not everything went as well as hoped. Yesterday, we flew to a promising site at the Dominion
Range — a huge, well-structured moraine indicating a long glacial history. All five of our group
exited the plane into a stiff, cold wind and headed for the bands of rock debris. After searching
for a couple of hours, we came up completely empty-handed. Unfortunately, the Otter had long
since left to ferry cargo for other groups and we waited for about three hours until it returned,
huddled behind the largest boulders we could find to shelter us from the wind. With our big
parkas on and facing the sun, we could almost take an afternoon nap as we kept waiting for the
hum of airplane engines. None of us like the idea of sitting around doing nothing, but given the
wind at our backs, “chilling out” seemed the appropriate thing to do.
 John GoodgeMark and
Tanya taking a break from the wind behind boulders of the Dominion Range moraine.

Our next task is to get to the most distant yet of our target sites, at Mount Howe and Hatcher
Bluffs. Each is within 300 miles of the South Pole. Hopefully we can line up Twin Otter flights at
the same time as there is clear weather!