The Sir Douglas Mawson Antarctic rock and mineral collection of 2280 specimens was collected during the 1911 - 1914 Australian Antarctic Expedition, mainly from Cape Denison, Adelie Land; Macquarie Island; Queen Mary Land and other locations. This collection was donated to the Australian Museum in 1939. It has great importance for both scientific and historical reasons. It includes many spectacular examples of metamorphic rocks such as garnet gneiss and schist, but also has igneous rocks such as pegmatite, anorthosite and troctolite, sedimentary rocks such as conglomerate, and glacial rocks such as tillite. Many of the rocks were collected from glacial moraine.
Copyright © Australian Museum, 2004