Cenozoic Micropaleontology and Biostratigraphy of the Victoria Land Basin

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This project will document the micro and macrofaunal content of the McMurdo Ice Shelf. Holocene fossil material has been lifted from the seafloor at the southern limits of McMurdo Sound and moved to the surface of the ice shelf during ablation. Current investigations involve attempts to characterize assemblages in different areas of the shelf in terms of bathymetry, substrate, and degree of faunal degradation. This project will include systematic and isotope studies in the laboratory. Although debris-rich ice shelves are rare in Antarctica today, the degree of transport of material (including fossil material) from the continental interior to the continental margin during the Cenozoic implies McMurdo Ice Shelf-like bodies were quite common in the past. The Holocene McMurdo Ice Shelf is the best available analog for these earlier Cenozoic ice shelves.