Coal Rock () is a prominent

nunatak A nunatak (from Inuit language, Inuit ) is the summit or ridge of a mountain that protrudes from an ice field or glacier that otherwise covers most of the mountain or ridge. They often form natural pyramidal peaks. Isolated nunataks are also cal ...

lying southeast of Fierle Peak at the south end of the

Forrestal Range The Forrestal Range () is a largely snow-covered mountain range, about long, standing east of Dufek Massif and the Neptune Range in the Pensacola Mountains, Antarctica. Discovery and name The Forrestal Range was discovered and photographed on ...

Pensacola Mountains The Pensacola Mountains () are a large group of mountain ranges and peaks that extend in a northeast–southwest direction in the Transantarctic Mountains System, Queen Elizabeth Land region of Antarctica. They comprise the Argentina Range, Forre ...

. It was mapped by the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

(USGS) from surveys and from

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

air photos, 1956–1966, and named by Dwight L. Schmidt, USGS geologist for two beds of graphitic

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

that are well exposed on the nunatak.Stewart, J., 2011. ''Antarctica: An Encyclopedia,'' 2nd ed. Jefferson, North Carolina and London, McFarland & Company, Inc. 1771 pp.

Geology

Coal Rock exposes about of the

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years, from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the s ...

Pecora Formation. At Coal Rock, it consists of gray to tan weathering, thin-bedded, fine-grained,

quartzose Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical fo ...

and

feldspathic Feldspar ( ; sometimes spelled felspar) is a group of rock-forming aluminium tectosilicate minerals, also containing other cations such as sodium, calcium, potassium, or barium. The most common members of the feldspar group are the ''plagiocla ...

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

that contains many thin interbeds of carbonaceous and pyritic

siltstone Siltstone, also known as aleurolite, is a clastic sedimentary rock that is composed mostly of silt. It is a form of mudrock with a low clay mineral content, which can be distinguished from shale by its lack of fissility. Although its permeabil ...

and

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...

. The sandstone is commonly cross-bedded and forms ledges. Two beds of graphitic coal, each about thick, are exposed at Coal Rock. These coal beds contain plant

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s including a glossopterid paleoflora of Permian age.Ford, A.B., Schmidt, D.L., Boyd Jr, W.W. and Nelson, W.H., 1978. ''Geologic Map of the Saratoga Table Quadrangle, Pensacola Mountains,'' ''Antarctica Map No. 9.'' scale 1:250,000. Reston, Virginia, US Geological Survey.

References

Rock formations of Queen Elizabeth Land Paleontological sites of Antarctica {{QueenElizabethLand-geo-stub