Mount Kirkpatrick

Mount Kirkpatrick rises in the Queen Alexandra Range of the Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica, reaching about 4,528 meters and standing as the highest peak in that range. Like the wider Transantarctic Mountains already documented in this section, it was raised along the rift-flank uplift bordering the West Antarctic Rift System, exposing a thick sequence of sedimentary rock from the Beacon Supergroup intruded by dark Jurassic-age Ferrar dolerite sills. The mountain is best known in the geological and paleontological record as the site where, in 1990 and 1991, researchers recovered the fossilized remains of Cryolophosaurus, the first large carnivorous dinosaur identified in Antarctica, found within its exposed Early Jurassic sedimentary strata. That discovery made Mount Kirkpatrick one of the few named sites where Antarctica's buried Mesozoic rock record has yielded directly identifiable fossil evidence. This entity documents Mount Kirkpatrick specifically as a geological formation, a Transantarctic Mountains peak of dolerite-intruded sedimentary strata that yielded the first Antarctic dinosaur fossil.