Coalsack Bluff () is a small rock bluff standing at the northern limits of Walcott Neve, west-southwest of Bauhs Nunatak. It was so named by the

New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition The New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition (NZGSAE) describes a series of scientific explorations of the continent Antarctica. The expeditions were notably active throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Features named by the expeditions 195 ...

(1961–62) because of the coal seams found running through the bluff.

Paleontology

Coalsack Bluff exposes a paleontologically important, fossiliferous sequence of sedimentary rocks containing the Permian–Triassic boundary. This bluff is a fossil location that has yielded well preserved

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and 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 251.9 Mya. It is the last period of the Pale ...

and

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

and plant,

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

, and

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxon, taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with vertebral column, backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the ...

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 preserved ...

s and

paleosol In the geosciences, paleosol (''palaeosol'' in Great Britain and Australia) is an ancient soil that formed in the past. The precise definition of the term in geology and paleontology is slightly different from its use in soil science. In geol ...

s that reveal the paleoclimatic and paleontologic changes associated with the

Permian–Triassic extinction event The Permian–Triassic (P–T, P–Tr) extinction event, also known as the Latest Permian extinction event, the End-Permian Extinction and colloquially as the Great Dying, formed the boundary between the Permian and Triassic geologic periods, a ...

. It is the location where abundant fossils of Early Triassic

tetrapod Tetrapods (; ) are four-limb (anatomy), limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant taxon, extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids (reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (p ...

s were first discovered in Antarctica. The vertebrate fossils found at this location are important in understanding the

biostratigraphy Biostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy which focuses on correlating and assigning relative ages of rock strata by using the fossil assemblages contained within them.Hine, Robert. “Biostratigraphy.” ''Oxford Reference: Dictionary of Bio ...

and vertebrate paleontology of Permian and Triassic strata in Antarctica.Retallack, G.J., Jahren, A.H., Sheldon, N.D., Chakrabarti, R., Metzger, C.A. and Smith, R.M.H., 2005. ''The Permian–Triassic boundary in Antarctica''. ''Antarctic Science'', 17(2), pp.241-258.Collinson, J. C., Hammer, W. R., Askin, R. A. & Elliot, D. H. 2006. ''Permian – Triassic boundary in the central Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica.'' ''Bulletin of the Geological Society of America'', 118(5-6), pp. 747–763.Liu, J., Abdala, F., Angielczyk, K.D. and Sidor, C.A., 2022. ''Tetrapod turnover during the Permo-Triassic transition explained by temperature change.'' ''Earth-Science Reviews'', 224(January), no. 103886.

References

Paleontological sites of Antarctica Cliffs of the Ross Dependency Shackleton Coast {{ShackletonCoast-geo-stub

Paleontology

See also

References