For this far violet line could be nothing else than the terrible mountains of the forbidden land—highest of the earth's peaks and focus of the earth's evil; harborers of nameless horrors and Archaean secrets. . . .
—H.P. Lovecraft
I woke up excitedly next morning at 6:30 A.M., quickly poked my head outside the tent and was relieved to see that the weather had improved. I was brimming with enthusiasm over the prospect of getting out onto the mountain to collect fossils. The winds had dropped to 20 knots and the temperature a cool, but tolerable 1°F. We decided that it was suitable weather for us to ascend Gorgon's Head. After a very hearty breakfast we made our scheduled morning radio call to Scott Base, prepared our packs with the necessary gear and food, and set off from base camp at 9:22 A.M. We drove the skidoos about three kilometers from the camp to a low rocky spur that led directly up to the top of the mountain.
It was a long, hard slog to the top, which took us around five hours, mainly because we were all heavily loaded up with the extra survival equipment and food supplies. The mere thought of finally getting up to some fossiliferous layers had put me in high spirits, along with the rest of the party who were also keen to see some geological action up on the top of the mountain.
On the climb up I collected some fossil plants in the scree fallen from the steep rocky sandstone bluff just below the distinctly colored Aztec Siltstone layers. On my return to Australia I later showed these specimens to fossil plant expert Steven McLoughlin, then at the University of Western Australia, and we wrote up a description of the fossil
plants, which was published in the British Geological Magazine. The most distinguishing features on the lycopod fossils were the different shapes of the leaf scars on the stems. Lycopods don't have true “leaves” in the botanical sense; instead they have outgrowths of the bark or stem as leaf-like structures. These eventually detach from the stem as they grow outwards, leaving a characteristic scar shape that can be like a diamond, rectangular or hexagonal and have a variety of distinctive inner markings as well. To an expert like Steve, the few fossils I'd managed to collect that day were a wealth of new scientific information.
The specimens of horsetails (lycopods) were identified by Steve as Haplostigma lineare, a species otherwise only known from the Late Devonian of Australia; Malanzania, a genus known previously only from the Carboniferous deposits of Argentina; and a species of Archaeosigillaria previously known only from the Devonian deposits of Africa and South America. All of these fossils smacked of “Gondwana,” reinforcing the important biogeographic links that fossils give for linking the modern-day southern continents.
Staring at the squashed impressions of 380 million-year-old plants while on the top of an Antarctic mountain on a gloomy overcast day brought to mind a very different picture of what this region was like at the time. The land had just been colonized by life for the first time in the Silurian Period, about 420 million years ago. At the time these Antarctic fossil plants were thriving, there would have been a sparse forest of low tree-like plants (the lycophytes) and an extensive ground cover of small stem-like plants (called proteridophytes). These would have flourished near the waterways. The largest of these primitive “trees” were giant lycopods reaching upwards of 20 meters, but most of the plants grew to less than a meter above the ground. No colorful flowers or pendulous pine cones here, just featureless thin green plants having simple flattened extensions of their stems for leaves.
A few primitive invertebrates crawled around these forests, such as springtails, mites, scorpions, millipedes, and centipede-like animals, as well as early spiders and their close cousins, the trigonotarbids. These all fed largely on each other as herbivory hadn't yet been invented. Creatures just didn't have the specialized ability to digest cellulose in those days so they just had to be content to eat each other. On the land
the scene was essentially quiet, but the real action in this Devonian world was taking place below the water, in the large flowing rivers and expansive lakes that teemed with many kinds of primitive fishes. Some were the size of tiny minnows; others were huge predatory monsters four meters long with razor-sharp stabbing teeth six centimeters in length. This was the real reason I had come to Antarctica, to collect the fossil remains of these most interesting ancient fishes from a time when fishes were the highest form of life on Earth.
We reached the base of the Aztec Siltstone, near the summit, at around ten minutes past three that afternoon. Finally I was face to face with the variegated green, red, and grey-banded rock unit famous for its ancient fossil fish remains! After about three hours of searching I had located a fish fossil horizon about twenty meters from the top of the Aztec Siltstone, more or less at the same level where the original fossil fish material had been found by Ken Woolfe's party three years earlier. The fossil bones showed up as light specks and streaks in a dark green, silty sandstone. These layers of rock did not outcrop very extensively and were spasmodically covered by the loose scree. I could only trace the fossil-bearing layers as small lenses of about two or three meters each in length. Further up the hill near the top of the Gorgon's Head we located another two fish-bearing horizons and proceeded to spend an enjoyable afternoon collecting lots of specimens. Most of these were small fragments of bone or teeth, nothing of spectacular appearance to the layperson, but many represented new records or unknown species for this region, so I was extremely happy with the things we were finding. Often this work required sitting down with a pile of rocks and carefully examining each surface with a hand lens to find the really interesting small things, like the beautifully preserved teeth of sharks or exquisite fish scales adorned with complex sculpturing on their surface.
As I worked on hands and knees with my nose down on the rocks, Margaret and Fraka measured a detailed section through the Aztec Siltstone, aided by Brian who held the measuring staff and lugged gear around for us. The sky was an ominous dark grey, reminding me of the gloomy Melbourne winters of my childhood but, as there was no wind or snow, we were able to keep working up on the top of the mountain
until about 8:00 P.M. Then, hitching our full backpacks bursting with specimens, we turned our back on Gorgon's Head and started heading back to camp.
It was a little easier going downhill, although we were careful not to move too fast through the loose scree slopes as our backpacks now added a lot of extra weight to each step. The last leg of the homeward trek involved donning crampons over our boots and leaping over a series of small crevasses in the slippery hard ice.
I have vivid memories of that day for it was the first time I'd worn my double leather climbing boots which I'd hired at the rate of $NZ13 per week. My feet were in agony by the end of the day as the boots were not a comfortable fit. I never wore those blasted boots again after that day, instead switching to the lighter Sorrell boots, or mukluks if not venturing far from camp. We reached our base camp, somewhat sore of foot and quite exhausted, yet elated with the good day's work, just before midnight.
It was Margaret's turn to cook dinner. Being tired we decided that one of the dehydrated meals would suffice, served with whipped potatoes lashed with butter and garlic powder. We jovially washed down the meal with a few nips of Irish Cream. I recall that Margaret had the “clumsies” that evening. She knocked over the water pot, then her drink, making little mistakes because she was so tired, as we all were. After cleaning up we all turned in to our bags around 2:00 A.M. Brian then tried to radio Scott Base but we received no reply. We must have fallen asleep close to 2:15 A.M., after twenty hours of activity since we awoke.
Next morning I woke up close to noon after a very deep sleep. It was slightly warmer at 14°F, but overhead the sky was still overcast. Light winds were blowing. My body ached all over from the previous day's massive effort; I sported blisters on my feet and had sore ankles from the offending leather climbing boots. After lunch we set out around the bend on skidoos to check out a low bluff of greenish-grey sandstone that Margaret was interested in examining for trace fossils, the evidence in the rocks of where life had once been moving around. We cruised around the face of the mountains on the skidoos for about six kilometers to reach the outcrop that comprised about 60 meters of
exposed lower rocks of the Beacon Group. Margaret told us it was probably the Hatherton Sandstone, named after Trove Hatherton, a geological pioneer of the New Zealand Antarctic Program.
These rocks were much older than the rocks with the fish and plants that we had been collecting the day before. They were of uncertain age, but Margaret suggested that they were probably early Devonian, maybe 400 million years old and, more importantly, that they represented a completely different ancient environment. These rocks, unlike the ones on top of Gorgon's Head, were full of trace fossils, the burrows, and feeding trails of invertebrate animals. Margaret busied herself that afternoon taking many measurements, photographs, and samples while the rest of us looked around trying to spot any unusual fossils. We found several nice examples of a large burrow form known as Beaconites barretti. The burrow was about as thick as your arm and had fine curved layers in it, indicating that the animal, probably some sort of crustacean, had been pushing down layers of sand with its legs after each episode of digging.
That night I was perhaps a tad ambitious in the culinary department. I cooked Thai fish with dried whole chilies, coriander, lemon grass, soy, and pepper; and served it with fluffy white rice, stir-fried veggies, and mushroom soup. It wasn't bad, despite having to use powdered condiments and spices. My one major complaint to the New Zealand Antarctic Program is that you just can't get fresh chilies, coriander, and basil when you need them! We had one nip each of Stone 's green ginger wine with the meal. Everyone applauded the meal and we even saved the leftover sauce for another time. Around 11:00 P.M. we all retired to our sleeping bags with the plan to climb another high peak the next day if the good weather held out.
The temperature was 7°F when we awoke next day. Weak winds blew from the west, and the sky was still quite overcast with some scant blue patches. This turned out to be another full-on workday. In the morning we set off once more on the skidoos and drove back to the rocky outcrops where we had worked the day before. After first scanning the hills through the binoculars we decided that we could see no signs of the Aztec Siltstone on the neighboring peak, nor an easy access route to the top, so we then changed plans for the day. We drove fur-
ther down around the base of the mountains to some low craggy out-crops of the Junction Spur Sandstone. It was an interesting section to look at as it showed the transition from this basal unit to the overlying Hatherton Sandstone.
Margaret was particularly interested in searching for more trace fossils, so she and Fraka did a detailed measured section of that out-crop and recorded the relative densities and abundances for all the different species of trace fossils. This work involved actually measuring the thickness of each individual layer of uniform rock in centimeters, noting precise details of its composition, structure, and presence or absence of trace fossils. The only fossils I recall seeing that day were masses of Skolithos, a perpendicular pipe-like burrow in the rock, and more of our regular layered burrows called Beaconites. Both of these fossil burrows were made by varieties of long-gone arthropods, most probably a crustacean of some sort. Our reasons for believing this relate to what happened later in the trip. At Mt. Gudmundson on 3 December Margaret discovered a resting trace of the animal that probably made the larger Beaconites burrows. She studied that resting trace intensely and took several photographs of it, as it is the only evidence we have that Beaconites burrows were made by some sort of arthropod. If my memory serves me well I recall that it was quite possibly something like a horseshoe crab.
In my notebook for that day there is a drawing with a cryptic figure below it saying 750-800 per square meter, giving the density for the number of burrows of Skolithos in the rocky layers. There is also a drawing showing the two kinds of Beaconites; one shows the larger Beaconites barretti (like a fat salami structure in the rock) and the other was the narrower Beaconites antarcticus (looking more like a thin cabanossi sausage structure).
It is interesting to note that this trace fossil, Beaconites, now known from various localities around the world, was first described and named by an Estonian geologist, Professor O. Vialov. It was based on his study of photographs of various trace fossils and sedimentary structures taken at Beacon Heights by geologist Larry Harrington of the University of New England (Australia). (The name Beaconites is obviously derived from the Beacon Heights mountain, first named by Scott
on his 1901 expedition because it could be seen from many miles away.) Beaconites barretti was named in honor of geologist Peter Barrett of Victoria University in Wellington, a veteran of many Antarctic expeditions covering most of the Transantarctic Mountains. Beaconites antarcticus was named by Margaret Bradshaw in her excellent paper on Antarctic trace fossils published in 1981.
There is still some controversy raging over the nature of these trace fossils and what ancient environments they could possibly represent. Margaret argued strongly for a shallow to near-shore marine environment for the trace fossil assemblages, whereas Ken Woolfe, a Victoria University geology graduate and veteran of several Antarctic expeditions himself, published an opposing view in 1990 that these rocks were mostly freshwater, formed in or near ancient river systems. Nigel Trewin, a Scottish geologist, and Ken McNamara of the Western Australian Museum have both studied the trace fossils found near Kalbarri in Western Australia, a very similar assemblage to what occurs in the lower Beacon Group sediments of Antarctica. They go a little on both sides suggesting that the Antarctic assemblages, if formed in similar conditions as the Kalbarri trace fossils, were probably formed close to marine conditions, with the influence of both wind-blown sands (forming coastal sand dunes) and freshwater sandy delta deposits.
Friday, 22 November, marked our seventh day in the field. We awoke to −1°F, with moderately strong winds gusting around thirty knots and a barometric pressure of 873 millibars and still falling. We heard from the radio schedule that we would be re-supplied by the Twin Otter aircraft between 27 and 29 November. This raised the issue of what things we would need on the re-supply and our list included color film, mattress rucksack buckles, two lashing ropes and two cargo straps plus loads of assorted batteries (mainly for our walkmans). In addition we would require another six drums of Mogas for the skidoos and one drum of kerosene for the stoves. We had plenty of food but requested a small bag of coconut and some peanut butter in order to attempt some exotic dishes further down the track.
The immediate plan was to pack up and tackle the McCleary Glacier, but we were still a little concerned that the wind could pick up and turn nasty, so we decided to wait and review the situation later that
morning. Unfortunately, the wind never eased up, so we stayed in our tents reading and napping most of the day. I noted in my diary that I felt quite tired for most of that day, and I added a peculiar note that “strangely have had to urinate frequently.” In this case it didn't develop into anything serious. It was more likely that I had been drinking too much tea and coffee all day. After a dinner of dehydrated beef stew curry, Fraka, Brian, and I played cards for a while, while Margaret braved the outside wind to pack her trace fossils.
My field diary also records “tonight we began reading aloud At the Mountains of Madness.” My spirited reading of the first few pages, setting the mood of the book, transfixed the others. They all thought it was an excellent idea to bring a book based around an Antarctic fossil-hunting expedition and read a few pages out aloud each night.
I could sense we were all eager to start moving up the McCleary Glacier, thereby entering an unknown region of Antarctica, a place on Earth where no humans had ever ventured before. The very thought made my head spin, thinking of how the first polar explorers went boldly into new territory, but often with disastrous results. However, I reassured myself with the facts that we were equipped with the best modern equipment, excellent maps, and aerial photographs, and had personnel with a total collective Antarctic experience of more than ten seasons of deep field expeditions.
I slept well that night, despite the howling gales outside. I knew we were ready for anything.