AND - 1
The key aim of the MIS Project is to determine past ice shelf responses to climate forcing, including variability at a range of timescales. To achieve this aim ANDRILL will recover core from beneath the McMurdo Ice Shelf. The primary target for the MIS site is a 1200 meter-thick body of Plio-Pleistocene (0-5 million years ago) glacimarine, terrigenous, volcanic, and biogenic sediment that has accumulated in the Windless Bight region of a flexural moat basin surrounding Ross Island. A single ~1000 meter-deep drillcore will be recovered from approximately 900m of water.
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AND - 2
The AND-2A drillcore recovered a 600 m-thick stratigraphic interval documenting the Antarctic coastal environment during the warm middle Miocene climatic optimum. A disconformity separating the middle and upper Miocene intervals in the AND-2A drillcore represents a substantial climate step into cold, glacial conditions of the late Miocene. Lower and middle Miocene shallow marine sediments were deposited in the subsiding Victoria Land Basin, during the relatively steady ‘thermal subsidence’ phase 4 of Fielding et al. (2006), on the coastal plain and continental shelf seaward of the rising Transantarctic Mountains. This stratigraphic sequence records repeating lithological changes in glacimarine, terrigenous, volcanic and biogenic sediments. Fossils preserved in these strata suggest non-polar climate conditions similar to southern Patagonia and southwestern New Zealand today, influenced by high sediment discharge from river run-off, and high coastal turbidity. This region was influenced by local glaciers from the adjacent Transantarctic Mountains (TAM), ice sheet advances from East and West Antarctica, and water depth changes, all of which imparted a readable history on the accumulating sediments.
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