Blood Falls

1 ANSWERS

1. GiGi
   

   Blood Falls is an outflow of an iron oxide-tainted plume of melting saltwater, occurring at the tongue of the Taylor Glacier onto the ice-covered surface of West Lake Bonney in Taylor Valley of the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Victoria Land, East Antarctica.
   
   The reddish deposit was found in 1911 by the Australian geologist Griffith Taylor who first explored the valley that presently bears his name.
   
   Poorly soluble hydrous ferric oxides are deposited at the surface of ice after the ferrous ions present in the melting saltwater are oxidized in contact with atmospheric oxygen. The more soluble ferrous ions are initially dissolved in old seawater trapped in an ancient pocket remaining from the Antarctic Ocean when a fjord was isolated by the glacier in its progression during the Miocene period, some 5 million years ago when the sea level was higher than today.

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