This award supports an investigation of the strata exposed in the Transantarctic Mountains which were deposited in a major foreland basin that developed adjacent to the Gondwanide orogenic belt during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic. Major features include the foreland basin, exposed in the central Transantarctic Mountains; a hypothetical paleogeographic high; and an intracratonic basin, exposed in southern Victoria Land. Relationships between these basins and the high are unresolved due to a lack of data in the area between the Nimrod and Byrd Glaciers. The proposed sedimentologic and stratigraphic analysis will identify and correlate units and determine the factors that controlled the formation, evolution, subsidence and sedimentation in the two basins.
