Desarrollo de la Antártica

EL DESARROLI.O DE LA ANTÁRTICA MINERAL RESOURCES The first whidh come to mind are the mineral resources. Amongst the rocks of the Antarctic Continent, as of any other Continent, there must be valuable minerals. It merely remains for men to find them and devise means of extracting them at reasonaJ.¡,le costo In a world w:hose mineral resources are being rapidly depleted, the mere existence of another untapped source of supply cannot fail to be important. But Wlhat are the prospects of finding minerals in An– tarctica? Let us nave a look at the map. Greater Antarctica is the region on the right. Lesser Antarctica (sometimes called Western Antarctica) is tlhe other parto These two are essentially different in geological structure. (Fig. 1). Most of ¡Greater Antarctica consists of Precambrian shield, made up of ancientgneísses and granites. A zone roughly coinciding with the Transantarctic Mountains is composed of late Precambrian and early Palaeozoic granitesand sediments which have been altered by heat and pressure in many places. Unaltered coal-bearing late Palaeozoic sediments overlíe the rodts of this zone and also a few parts of t:he Pre-cambrian shíeld. Rich mineral deposits ihave been found in I>he ¡Precambrian shíehls of other continents such as tíhose of Western Australia, eastern Canada, and S:candínavia, and in rO<lks like those of the Transantarctic Mountains. In Lesser Antarctica, however, Precambrian and Paleozoic rocks are of limited extent only, for most of this part consists of Mesozoic and Tertiary rooks which are related to those of t:he Andean chain of South America. The Andean ühain contains important copper deposíts and there are possibilities that tJhese míght also occur in the mountains of the Antarctic ¡Península. Coal bearing strata lha-ve been found in the Transantarctic Mountaíns. However, although the area of Antarctica isfive and a halE million square miles, less than five percent of this area is visible as ice-free mck. The chances. therefore, that minerals will occur in this very small area of visible rock relatively small. tAdmittedly, the rook is bare of vegetatíon and generally of soil, and can therefore be examined rather more readily than the roCk. in other continents, where it is covered with trees and bushes and earth. However, most of the rock outcrops in Antarctica are in the form of mountain peaks whose heights, distances from the coast, and surrounding ramparts of crevassed ice make them difficult to approach. Also, many mineral exploitation teühniques could not be used as the