ДЕТАЛЬНОЕ ИЗУЧЕНИЕ ГЕОЛОГИИ ЗЕМЛИ ВИКТОРИИ

DETAILED STUDY OF THE GEOLOGY OF VICTORIA LAND

In this scientific work we have carried out a detailed study of Victoria Land (Antarctica). To map the area between 76°- 76°30′S of the island, 2 expeditions were perfomed by Italian geologists from 2017 to 2019. In the process, the age of rocks in the study area was established. It ranges from the Early Paleozoic in the granite basement to the Permian (Triassic) - Jurassic in sedimentary and igneous rocks. And also some key features of the territory were highlighted and the difference in elevation of the erosion surface was explained. Environmental magnetic studies were conducted on the cores to determine the sediment source. The difficulty was that interpretations of paleomagnetic and magnetic environmental signals in Antarctic sedimentary strata were hampered by incomplete knowledge of the magnetic mineralogy of the parent rocks. But despite this, a map of the distribution of magnetic minerals in the lithified rocks of the "basement" of the south of Victoria Land was compiled. The content of magnetic minerals in all rocks turned out to have been almost the same. In addition, the analysis of detrital zircons from the north of Victoria Land was carried out in combination with petrographic and whole-rock geochemical studies, in order to provide information on provenance and maximal depositional ages of the sediments. It was concluded that all described rock formations have very similar detrital zircon-age spectra for metasedimentary rocks which are comparable with those of other late Neoproterozoic to Ordovician metasedimentary sequences along the Australian - East Antarctic margin.