Concept

Hanson Formation

Summary
The Hanson Formation (also known as the Shafer Peak Formation) is a geologic formation on Mount Kirkpatrick and north Victoria Land, Antarctica. It is one of the two major dinosaur-bearing rock groups found on Antarctica to date; the other is the Snow Hill Island Formation and related formations from the Late Cretaceous of the Antarctic Peninsula. The formation has yielded some Mesozoic specimens, but most of it is as yet unexcavated. Part of the Victoria Group of the Transantarctic Mountains, it lies below the Prebble Formation and above the Falla Formation. The formation includes material from volcanic activity linked to the Karoo-Ferar eruptions of the Lower Jurassic. The climate of the zone was similar to that of modern southern Chile, humid, with a temperature interval of 17–18 degrees. The Hanson Formation is correlated with the Section Peak Formation of the Eisenhower Range and Deep Freeze Range, as well as volcanic deposits on the Convoy Range and Ricker Hills of southern Victoria Land. The Victoria Group (also called Beacon Supergroup) from the Central Transantarctic Mountains was defined by Ferrar in 1907, when he described the "Beacon Sandstone" of the sedimentary rocks in the valleys of the Victoria Land. Following this initial work, the term "Beacon System" was introduced for a series of similar sandstones and associated deposits that were recovered locally. Later the "Beacon Sandstone Group" was assigned to those units in Victoria Land, with Harrington in 1965 proposing the name for different units that appear in the Beacon rocks of south Victoria Land, the beds below the Maya erosion surface, the Taylor Group and the Gondwana sequence, including the Victoria Group. This work left out several older units, such as the Permian coal measures and glacial deposits. It was not until 1963 that there was an establishment of the Gondwana sequence: the term Falla Formation was chosen to delimit a 2300 ft (700 m) series of lower quartz sandstone, a middle mica-carbon sandstone and an upper sandstone-shale unit.
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