JOINT ITALIAN-BRITISH PETROLOGICAL-PALAEOENVIRONMENTAL INVESTIGATIONS OF NEOGENE VOLCANIC SEQUENCES IN NORTHERN VICTORIA LAND

A joint investigation between the Italian Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA) and the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) was undertaken in northern Victoria Land in December 2005 and January 2006 (Fig. 1). The study is focused on volcanic sequences in the western coastal areas of the Ross Sea. The sequences are in a pivotal position to record palaeoenvironmental and magmatic evolution along about 400 km of the Ross Sea margin of East Antarctica over the past 10-12 million years. It is a critical yet poorly known environmental period of Earth history for which almost the entire regional record has been removed by erosion in the adjacent Ross Sea. The volcanic sequences can thus fill in this important gap in our knowledge