Protecting mineral treasures of Antarctica's Larsemann Hills - 4

 

Blue prisms of the borosilicate grandidierite in gneiss with the aluminosilicate sillimanite (white prisms) and the borosilicate tourmaline (dark) can be seen in this sample from the Wilcock Bay area on the southern Stornes Peninsula. The sample was collected as part of a research study of minerals in the Larsemann Hills in Antarctica. In November 2003, Edward S. Grew, a research professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences at the University of Maine in Orono, and Christopher J. Carson, a senior Antarctic geoscientist with Geoscience Australia in Canberra, were part of a team of researchers that travelled to Antarctica's Larsemann Hills as part of a study to determine how abundant boron and phosphorus were in the area, and to suggest an explanation for why there might be an exceptional enrichment there. The trip began a decade-long research project that culminated in the 2014 designation of the area as an Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA). The Larsemann Hills are a 40-square-kilometer region of rocky islands and promontories on the eastern shore of Prydz Bay. Previous studies of the area suggested that boron and phosphorus were there in large quantities, which would be particularly exciting because the two elements are rarely found in more than trace amounts in highly deformed and metamorphosed rocks such as the granulite-facies metamorphic rocks exposed in the Larsemann Hills.   You can read the entire story about this expedition online in Earth magazine, "Protecting the mineral treasures of Antarctica's Larsemann Hills." Credit: Edward S. Grew, University of Maine