Weather Kind To Antarctic Party

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30956, 12 January 1966, Page 3

Weather Kind To Antarctic Party

(New Zealand Press Association) SCOTT BASE, January 11. The Antarctic has lost some of its terrors for the southern field party which is now back at Scott Base. During the last month spent in tents only 300 miles from the South Pole, temperatures averaged a mild minus 16 degrees centigrade and snow fell on only five days.

The party—Messrs A. C Bibby, of Wellington, D. J. Young, of Greymouth, R. J. Ryburn, of Dunedin, and A.

C. Rayment, of Fox Glacier—were prepared for extreme temperatures and continual winds. They expected blizzards which would last a week. But the Polar Plateau failed to live up to its reputation and the party enjoyed more sunshine and less wind than most holidayers on New Zealand beaches. Down clothing, double sleeping bags, and 31b of food a man a day made conditions “almost cushy.” The settled weather enabled the party to complete its geological programme in twothirds of the predicted time. The expedition found evidence of marine life and lush palms at the Darwin and Buckley nunataks—some of the most southerly rock outcrops in the world. Shackleton discovered the nunataks in 1908 and Scott passed them on his ill-fated pole trip. Both parties collected fossils there, but geologists have long had unanswered questions about their location and relation to corresponding fossil rocks in the Antarctic and other southern continents. Messrs Young and Rybum made a detailed geological map of the nunataks, recollected glassopteris and archaeocyathinae fossils, and found many other links with a 250-million-year-old past. A paper is now to be written describing the geology of the nunataks and relating it to other regions. This expedition was part of a new phase in Antarctic work. Now most of the Ross Dependency has been covered by reconnaissance parties, detailed investigations will be carried out of smaller areas of special interest to geologists and other scientists.