The Queen Alexandra Range (-84°N, 168°W) is a major mountain range about 100 nmi long, bordering the entire western side of Beardmore Glacier from the Polar Plateau to the Ross Ice Shelf. The range is in the Transantarctic Mountains System, and is located in the Ross Dependency region of Antarctica.

Discovery

The Queen Alexandra Range was discovered on the journey toward the South Pole by the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–09 (BrAE), and was named by Ernest Shackleton for Queen Alexandra, Queen of the United Kingdom, 1901-10. Shackleton and his men, and a later expedition headed by Robert Falcon Scott, both collected rock samples from the range that contained fossils. The discovery that multicellular life forms had lived so close to the South Pole was an additional piece of evidence that accompanied the publication (in 1910 and independently in 1912) of the theory of continental drift.

Location

The Queen Alexandra Range is bounded by the Beardmore Glacier along its southeast edge, which divides it from the Commonwealth Range of the Queen Maud Mountains to the east. The west of the range is bounded by the Antarctic Plateau in the south. Further north it is bounded by the Walcott Névé to the east, which separates the range from the Colbert Hills. The Walcott Névé joins the Law Glacier in the Bowden Névé which feeds the Lennox-King Glacier. This glacier bounds the northwest part of the range, and separates it from the Holland Range to the north. The northern tip of the range extends to the Ross Ice Shelf between the Lennox King Glaciers and Beardmore Glacier.

Major glaciers

Mountains and peaks

Mountains and peaks over 3000 m high include:

Features

Major features that are the focus of a named or unnamed group of lesser features, include:

Sources