The first fossils from Antarctica were collected from Seymour Island in December 1892, during the voyage of the Jason under Captain C.A. Larsen. The Swedish South Polar Expedition of 1901–1903, led by Otto Nordenskjöld, proved that there were extensive deposits of fossiliferous Cretaceous and Tertiary sedimentary rock in the James Ross Island area. This was confirmed by later geological mapping (Bibby 1966). Subsequent investigations have led to the establishment of various lithostratigraphic schemes (e.g. Ineson et al. 1986), and interpretation of the sedimentary history in terms of basin evolution (Elliot 1988, Macdonald et al. 1988). Unfortunately, different names have been proposed for the depositional basin, with consequent confusion. The purpose of this note is to review previous usage and propose a new consistent nomenclature for the sedimentary basins east of the Antarctic Peninsula.

A nearly complete lower pharyngeal tooth-plate from a large (over 60 cm long) fossil wrasse (Perciformes: Labridae) was recently recovered from the middle to late Eocene La Meseta Formation on Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula. This find increases the number of teleosts from the Eocene of Antarctica to five taxa, and further illustrates the diversity of the ichthyofauna in the Eocene Weddellian Sea prior to wide-scale climatic change in the Southern Ocean. The fossil wrasse represents the first occurrence of this family in Antarctica, and is one of the oldest fossils of this family from the Southern Hemisphere. Wrasses are not found in Antarctic waters today, and probably became extinct during the Oligocene due to a combination of climatic change, loss of shallow-water habitat, and changes in the trophic structure of the Wedell Sea.

Sulphide-bearing quartz veins were first observed on Hurd Peninsula, Livingston Island, at Henry Bluff in 1958 (Hobbs 1968). Subsequent mapping of the host Miers Bluff Formation (MBF) in western Hurd Peninsula either did not record veining or was ambiguous as to its distribution, scale of development and genesis (for review see Pride et al. 1990).

Details are presented of seismic velocities at a site near Rothera Point, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula. The snow/firn velocity structure was obtained using a 24-channel Bison 9000 seismograph, recording the outputs of geophones of 40 Hz natural frequency attached to 150 mm snow spikes. The refraction velocity of the underlying bedrock was measured using a 48-channel DFS V recorder and 10 Hz geophones. The records were obtained during trials of equipment and techniques which took place in the 1988–89 and 1990–91 seasons. The data will be of interest to other investigators studying firn structure around Antarctica or considering crustal seismology in the Antarctic Peninsula region.

The rocks of the James Ross Basin consist of a 6 km-thick, relatively complete sequence of Early Cretaceous-Eocene marine sediments, which are remarkably well exposed over Seymour, Vega, James Ross, and Snow Hill islands. Throughout most of the sequence, macrofossils and microfossils are extremely abundant and diverse.

A time series of wind stresses computed from European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) wind data is compared to the climatology of Hellermann & Rosenstein (HR) for the Southern Hemisphere. ECMWF stresses are generally stronger, especially in the westerly belt. However they have an overall lower meridional component than the HR data. The dominance of the half annual cycle relative to the annual wave in the zonal stress at middle to high latitudes, which is documented for independent data sets, is seen in the ECMWF but not in the HR data. ECMWF winds are also compared with measurements from three expeditions to the Weddell Sea by RV Polarstern. Good correlations between Polarstern and ECMWF winds are found but for single dates the differences are above 10 ms −1. The differences are found to be uncorrelated in space and are thus due to observational errors and to the unresolved small scale variance in the ECMWF analysed winds.

Measurement of pressure fluctuations provides the best means of detecting atmospheric internal gravity waves at the Earth's surface. We have developed an instrument which is sufficiently sensitive to detect the small pressure fluctuations associated with such waves yet robust enough for deployment in an Antarctic environment. The instrument incorporates several novel features, both in its design and in the method of deployment used. A prototype instrument has been successfully deployed at the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Station during 1989. The design of an experiment using an array of six improved instruments is briefly described.