Antarctic Ocean-Floor Fossils — Thomas 
On the east side lava beds are cut by dikes and 
sills, while on the west side metasedimentary 
beds are intruded and heavily folded. 
Ridley Beach, at the foot of Cape Adare, is 
a larger-scale version of Hallett Beach and 
supports a correspondingly larger population 
of penguins. Borchgrevink wintered here in 
1898. The hut erected by him and used by 
Scott’s northern party in 1912 is still intact. 
The sample was taken in 402 m of water 
off Pressure Bay, on the west-central side of 
Robertson Bay. According to Priestly and 
Wright (1922) the ice in this location (as the 
name implies) is hummocky and unstable. 
Catastrophic breaks caused by violent winds 
and glacial activity create turbulent sea ice 
conditions. The present author steamed to the 
head of Robertson Bay in January, 1956 with- 
out sighting a vestige of bay ice. At the same 
time, the south part of McMurdo Sound and 
Hallett Inlet were frozen solid. 
Sabrina Coast : The coast is an ice barrier 
throughout its length. No embayments of any 
consequence are carved in it. The pack ice is 
perennial, with consolidated fields of hum- 
mocky ice persisting until November or Decem- 
ber. It stays this way until April, when floes 
break up, and then coverage varies between 
close and loose pack. The sea bed was sam- 
pled at 65°6l'S, 119°21'E in a depth of 586 m. 
Clark Peninsula*. This is a headland approxi- 
mately 3 miles long by 2 miles wide (maxi- 
mum). It has been described in detail by 
Hollin and Cameron (1961). At the distal 
end of the peninsula the inland ice terminates 
in a heavily morained area. Outcrops are basi- 
cally highly metamorphosed sedimentaries with 
garnet inclusions. These rocks have been in- 
truded by granites and scored by dikes and 
sills of hornblendite, muscovite, and olivine, 
and by orthoclase and plagioclase feldspars. 
Ice conditions at Vincennes Bay, wherein 
Clark Peninsula is located, are said to be turbu- 
lent with catastrophic breaks often producing 
open water in the winter. After breakup in the 
summer the area is kept generally ice-free by 
the Balaena Islets. These land masses dam the 
southwesterly drift of pack and glacial ice. 
The bottom was sampled 450 m off Wilkes 
Station at 66° 1 6'S, 110°34'E in 75 m of 
47 
water. Organic remains in bottom sediments 
were exclusively diatomaceous. 
DISCUSSION 
An examination of sediment analyses (Tress- 
ler, 1957) shows the dominant material at 
each station: Kainan Bay (30 miles east of Bay 
of Whales) — feldspar, 50%; Arrival Bay — 
silicaceous sponge spicules and small shell frag- 
ments, 100%; Hallett Inlet — shells, 30%; 
Robertson Bay — feldspar, 40%; Clark Penin- 
sula — feldspar, 50%. 
No analysis was made of the Sabrina Coast 
material. 
Table 1 shows the incidence of skeletal 
remains of microorganisms in each of the loca- 
tions sampled. 
In his discussion of the Gould collection of 
Bay of Whales sediments, Warthin (1934) 
remarks, "Although foraminifera with secreted 
calcareous tests comprise one-sixth of the spe- 
cies, they make up only 7.2 percent of the 
individuals present. This condition is markedly 
different from that found by the Terra Nova 
expedition on the western side of the Ross 
Sea where 60 percent of the species collected 
were calcareous.” 
The foraminifera listed in the table which 
have calcareous tests comprise the following 
percentages of species and individuals at sta- 
tions indicated: 
PERCENTAGE 
PERCENTAGE 
OF 
OF 
calcareous 
CALCAREOUS 
STATION 
SPECIES 
INDIVIDUALS 
Ross Barrier 
2.0 
7.0 
Arrival Bay 
67.0 
92.0 
Cape Hallett 
82.0 
75.0 
Robertson Bay 
30.0 
25.0 
Sabrina Coast 
33.0 
35.0 
Ostracod carapaces were present only in the 
Arrival Bay and Cape Hallett sediments. Radio- 
larian skeletons, on the other hand, were ab- 
sent in these sediments and present only in the 
Ross Barrier, Robertson Bay, and Sabrina Coast 
materials. Warthin (1934) mentioned the pres- 
ence of radiolaria in the Gould collection from 
the Bay of Whales. They were not identified. 
Bearing in mind that the Bay of Whales, Ross 
