Have a budding geologist in the family? Like rocks, science, research, the arctic?
The Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility is located on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a one story building addition on the west end of the Carraway Building referred to as the Carraway Annex.
The Facility is a national repository over 20,000 meters of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic marine geological core samples and 3000 meters of rotary cored geological material acquired by NSF supported drilling programs in the Antarctic. Replacement cost of this core inventory in terms of ship and ice-based drilling is conservatively estimated to be in the range of $150 to $200M.
The collections are maintained to process and store marine sediments. Most of the core storage area consists of a 500 square meter room kept at 2 degrees Celsius.
One of the core acquisitions was extracted from deep beneath the sea floor of Antarcticas western Ross Sea, the Earths largest floating ice body. The samples are segments of a drill core that measures more than 1,100 meters in length and it offers an extraordinary stratigraphic record of sedimentary rock from the Antarctic continental margin that documents key developments in the areas Cenozoic climatic and glacial history. This is critical for low-lying regions such as Florida that could be directly affected by the future behavior of the Antarctic Ice Sheets and any resulting sea-level changes
Visitors are requested to call in advance for a tour of the facility.
Antarctic Research Facility at Florida State University
3219 Apalachee Parkway
Tallahassee, FL 32311-5203
850-644-2407