The Vestfold Hills are rounded, rocky, coastal hills, 512 square kilometres (198 sq mi) in extent, on the north side of Sorsdal Glacier on the Ingrid Christensen Coast of Princess Elizabeth Land , Antarctica. The hills are subdivided by three west-trending peninsulas bounded by narrow fjords. Most of the hills range between 30 and 90 metres (98 and 300 ft) in height, with the highest summit reaching nearly 160 metres (520 ft).
5-498: Organic Lake is a lake in the Vestfold Hills in eastern Antarctica . It was formed 6,000 years ago when sea levels were higher; it is isolated, rather shallow 7.5 metres (25 ft), meromictic , a few hundred meters in diameter and has extremely salty water. It has the highest recorded concentration of dimethyl sulfide in any natural body of water. In 2011, a new species of virophage (a satellite virus that impairs
10-687: A great variety of lake systems with over 300 lakes and ponds including what is possibly the largest concentration of meromictic (stratified) lakes in the world. This region contains 37 permanently stratified water bodies, including six marine basins and seven seasonally isolated marine basins (SIMBs). These stratified basins also have great variety. They range in salinity from 4 g L to 235 g L , in temperature from −14 to 24 °C (6.8 to 75 °F), in depth from 5 to 110 metres (16 to 361 ft), in area from 3.6 to 146 hectares (8.9 to 360.8 acres) and surface level from 30 metres (98 ft) below to 29 metres (95 ft) above sea level. The region contains
15-547: A large lake, Lake Burton , as well as the smaller Krok Lake and Camp Lake . The Vestfold Hills were discovered, and a landing was made in the northern portion, on February 20, 1935, by Captain Klarius Mikkelsen together with his wife and seven crew members (including the ship's dentist, Lief Sørsdal) of the Norwegian whaling ship "Thorshavn" sent out by Lars Christensen . Caroline Mikkelsen , thereby became
20-656: The ability of its co-infective host virus to replicate) was discovered in Organic Lake, the Organic Lake virophage . It is a parasite of 'Organic Lake phycodnavirus ', a large virus that infects algae and belongs to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDV), but in fact may rather be a member of an extended family Mimiviridae (aka Megaviridae ) than of the family Phycodnaviridae. Vestfold Hills The Vestfold Hills are largely snow- and ice-free and are thus classified as an Antarctic oasis . They contain
25-630: The first woman to set foot on the Antarctic continent. The Vestfold Hills are named after Vestfold , a county in Norway where Sandefjord , headquarters of the whaling industry, is located. This hill area and its off-lying islands were mapped from air photos taken by the Lars Christensen Expedition (1936–37). Further brief landings were made by Lincoln Ellsworth and several claims were made by Hubert Wilkins in 1939. The area
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