Stratigraphy.

Abstract

MSSTS-1 (Lat. 77o33'26"S, Long. 163o23'13" ) was drilled 12 km off the Vicatoria Land coast in 195m of water and cored to a depth of 227m below the sea floor. The cored strata consists mainly of poorly sorted mudstone and sandstone with scattered lonestones (73% of core), but also include 8 diamictite units (16%) and 3 moderately sorted shallow water sandstone beds (11%). The core thus records a series of glacial advances over a site where sedimentation was dominated by settling from suspension and ice-rafting. Dating of the core from diatom and paleomagnetic studies indicates the core from 226m to 115m sub-bottom to represent more orless continuous sediment accumulation from 30 to 24 m.y. ago. Strata above this are less well dated, but are probably Early Miocene, Early Pliocene and Late Quaternary in age. Core logs on a scale of 1:40 and photographs of the boxed core are included as appendices.-from Authors