Annual report on the Falkland Islands and Dependencies / Colonial Office.

  • Great Britain. Colonial Office.
Date:
[1973]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on the Falkland Islands and Dependencies / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/88 (page 39)
    PART III Chapter 1: Geography The Falkland Islands lie in the South Atlantic Ocean, between latitudes 51° and 53° South and longitudes 57° and 62° West. The archipelago is separated from the South American mainland by about 300 miles of sea. It comprises two large islands and some 200 smaller islands with a total land area of approximately 4,700 square miles, comparable in area with Northern Ireland but spread over a much greater extent. The distance from Stanley to New Island, the most westerly settle¬ ment, is somewhat greater than that from London to Cardiff while the distance between the most northerly and southerly settled areas approximates to that between Oxford and the Isle of Wight. Complete aerial photographic cover of the territory exists and excellent topographical maps are available on scales of 1 : 50,000, 1 : 250,000 and 1 : 643,000. GEOLOGY AND LANDFORMS The Falkland Islands are composed almost entirely of Palaeozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary rocks. Some of these have strong litho¬ logical and palaeontological affinities with those of South Africa, Uruguay and Southern Brazil. Although the islands lie on the edge of the Patagonian Continental Shelf, there is no stratigraphical connec¬ tion between the Falklands and the nearer parts of the South American mainland. The extensive Tertiary deposits of eastern Patagonia are not represented in the Falkland Islands nor is the great oil-bearing Cretaceous geosyncline of eastern Tierra del Fuego. The axis of Andean folding is supposed to lie to the south of the islands, through Burdwood Bank, whence it is continued as the Scotia Arc to South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and ultimately to the Antarctic Peninsular. The distribution of rocks within the Falkland Islands is now fairly well known. West Falkland and the adjacent islands are predomi¬ nantly composed of Palaeozoic sedimentary rocks, quartzites, sand¬ stones and shales, with a few minor occurrences of tillite and a small exposure of the Archaean basement complex at Cape Meredith in the extreme south.