Two of the outstanding problems in Antarctic earth sciences are the early history of the East Antarctic ice sheet, and the history of the Transantarctic Mountains. These two problems may well be linked, for if the initial uplift of the Transantarctic Mountains was sufficient to promote a permanent ice cap, this may have triggered formation of the East Antarctic ice sheet in the manner oudined by Drewry (1975, p 266). Glomar Challenger in 1973 made the first major breakthrough concerning early history of the ice sheet by recovering cores from the centre of the Ross Sea; they show that ice rafting began there 25 Ma BP and has been going on ever since (Hayes and others, 1975). However, the core data give little indication of the extent of ice cover, or of the climatic changes that led to expanded ice cover which produced the ice-rafted debris.
The paradox of a long grounding during West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat in Ross Sea