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Elephant Moraine - Northern Ice Patch
This large icefield is situated along an ice escarpment sub-parallel to the Reckling Moraine - Elephant Moraine escarpment and is approximately 35 kilometers northwest of Elephant Moraine (ALH-DAV-Figure 1- 45 KB JPEG). The Northern Ice Patch roughly trends east-west with nearly 150 square kilometers of exposed ice. EET10-Figure 1 (39 KB JPEG) is an enlarged view of a satellite image of the Northern Ice Patch.
The icefield was first visited by a reconnaissance team during the 1982-83 field season (Cassidy et al., 1983). They traversed only a small portion of the icefield finding a few scattered meteorites, two of which were collected. Further reconnaissance during the 1987-88 field season indicated that meteorites could be found over a wide area, but at low densities. In the most promising area, a 1 x 1 kilometer area was chosen for a test systematic search that yielded 14 specimens. A total of 31 specimens were recovered from the Northern Ice Patch that season (Huss et al., 1988). The entire icefield was systematically searched during the 1992-93 field season and an additional 192 meteorites were recovered.
EET10-Table 1 gives a tabulation of meteorite types recovered from the Northern Ice Patch.
Except for the 14 specimens located in the area that was systematically searched during the 1987-88 season, the location of the other specimens found in that season are only approximately located from field sketch maps. The meteorites found by systematic searching were surveyed using the theodolite and EDM and are precisely located relative to two control stations. These control stations were determined using GPS receivers during the 1992-93 season. All of the meteorites in the 1992 collection were determined using GPS surveying methods.
Acknowledgments; We thank ANSMET field team members William Cassidy, Carl Thompson, and Vagn Buchwald (1982-1983); Gary Huss, Carl Thompson, Jerry Wagstaff, and Peter Wasilewski (1987-1988); Jerry Delaney, Ralph Harvey, Sue Iveson, Peter Mouginis-Mark, John Schutt, and Meenakshi Wadhwa (1992-1993).
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