Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands
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The Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands are a line of subglacial highlands in
West Antarctica West Antarctica, or Lesser Antarctica, one of the two major regions of Antarctica, is the part of that continent that lies within the Western Hemisphere, and includes the Antarctic Peninsula. It is separated from East Antarctica by the Transan ...
that extend west-southwest from the central
Ellsworth Mountains The Ellsworth Mountains are the highest mountain ranges in Antarctica, forming a long and wide chain of mountains in a north to south configuration on the western margin of the Ronne Ice Shelf in Marie Byrd Land. They are bisected by Minneso ...
to the vicinity of Mount Moore and Mount Woollard.


Discovery

The existence of the feature was first indicated from seismic soundings by the
Marie Byrd Land Marie Byrd Land (MBL) is an unclaimed region of Antarctica. With an area of , it is the largest unclaimed territory on Earth. It was named after the wife of American naval officer Richard E. Byrd, who explored the region in the early 20th centu ...
Traverse Party, 1957–58, led by Charles R. Bentley. The Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands were delineated in detail by the
Scott Polar Research Institute The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge, located on Lensfield Road in the south ...
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National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...
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Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark (), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's first polytechnic, and it is today ran ...
airborne radio echo sounding program, 1967–79, and named in association with the Ellsworth Mountains.


Geology

There is a subglacial valley up to 3 kilometres deep that is about 280 kilometres long and at least 22 kilometres across. In places the sub-glacial valley floor is more than 1500 metres below sea level.


References

Plateaus of Antarctica Landforms of Ellsworth Land Highlands {{EllsworthLand-geo-stub