Major Islands of the World
Major Islands of the World : Australia
| Baffin | Borneo | Ellesmere
| Great Britain | Greenland
| Hawaii | Honshu
| Java | Lombok
| Luzon | Madagascar
| Male Island | New
Guinea | North Island |
Ross Island
| South Island | Sri
Lanka | Sulawesi | Sumatra
| Taiwan | Victoria
Ellesmere
Ellesmere Island (French: Īle d'Ellesmere) is part of the Qikiqtaaluk Region of the Canadian territory of Nunavut. Lying within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago it is considered part of the Queen Elizabeth Islands, with Cape Columbia being the most northerly point of land in Canada. It comprises an area of 196,235 km² (75,767 square miles), making it the world's tenth largest island and Canada's third largest island.
Geography
More than one-fifth of the island is protected as Quttinirpaaq National Park (formerly Ellesmere Island National Park), which includes seven fjords and a variety of glaciers, as well as Lake Hazen, the world's largest lake north of the Arctic Circle. Barbeau Peak, the highest mountain in Nunavut (2,616 m, 8,593 ft) is located in the British Empire Range on Ellesmere Island. The most northern mountain range in the world, the United States Range is located in the northeast region of the island. The northern lobe of the island is called Grant Land.
Large portions of Ellesmere Island are covered with glaciers and ice, with Manson Icefield and Sydkap in the south; Prince of Wales Icefield and Agassiz Ice Cap along the central-east side of the island, along with substantial ice cover in Northern Ellesmere Island. The northwest coast of Ellesmere Island was covered by a massive, 500 km long ice shelf until the twentieth century. The Ellesmere ice shelf reduced by 90 percent in the twentieth century due to global warming, leaving the separate Alfred Ernest, Ayles, Milne, Ward Hunt, and Markham Ice Shelves. A 1986 survey of Canadian ice shelves found that 48 km² (3.3 cubic kilometers) of ice calved from the Milne and Ayles ice shelves between 1959 and 1974. The Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest remaining section of thick (>10 m) landfast sea ice along the northern coastline of Ellesmere Island, lost 600 km² of ice in a massive calving in 1961-1962. It further decreased by 27% in thickness (13 m) between 1967 and 1999.
Schei and later Nathorst described the Paleocene-Eocene (ca. 55 Ma) fossil forest in the Stenkul Fiord sediments. The Stenkul Fiord site represents a series of deltaic swamp and floodplain forests . The trees stood for at least 400 years. Individual stumps and stems of >1 m (>3 ft) diameter were abundant. Abundance of Metasequoia and possibly Glyptostrobus trees.
In 2006, University of Chicago paleontologist Neil H. Shubin reported the discovery of the fossil of a Paleozoic (ca. 375 Ma) fish, named Tiktaalik roseae, in the former stream beds of Ellesmere Island. The fossil exhibits many characteristics of fish, but also indicates a transitional creature that may be a predecessor of amphibians, reptiles and dinosaurs.
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