SURGICAL BLASTING FOR PALEONTOLOGICAL EVIDENCE,DOMINION RANGE, ANTARCTICA

摘要

The use of explosives in a surgical manner was approved to facilitate, due to time constraints, an extremely significant paleontological find in the Plunket Point area of the Dominion Range, Antarctica. The organic material revealed by surgical blasting techniques may have altered basic scientific dogma on Antarctic glaciation theory.Relying on findings from two previous expeditions, a decision was made to use small amounts of explosives to loosen sedimentary formations in a glacial moraine area. Our hope was to reveal specimens from the last major Antarctic freeze-down, a supposed fifteen to twenty million years ago.A team of nine persons was put in at a blue ice runway on the Mill Glacier by a ski-equipped Navy C-130 Hercules. After many sojoumes on foot and snowmobile, an area was chosen above the moraine of the Beardmore Glacier.Holes were drilled horizontally using a gas powered Cobra drill into the uplifted sedimentary formations. The big payoff came on Christmas morning when we discovered a compressed four- to six-inch thick layer of leaves that had not petrified over a span of 2.8 to 3.2 million years-a newly discovered species of the Southern Beech tree.