James Ross Island Group

The James Ross Island Group is a group of islands located close to the north-eastern tip of Graham Land in the British Antarctic Territory.

The largest islands in the group are:

• James Ross Island,
• Snow Hill Island,
• Vega Island, and
• Seymour Island.

The islands lie to the south of the Joinville Island Group, separated from those islands by the Erebus and Terror Gulf.

There are numerous important palaeontological sites. The first discovery here of fossils of extinct creatures was made by Carl Johan Larson on Seymour Island in December 1892. Since his time, fossils from wide range of geological ages, before and after the extinction of the dinosaurs, have been excavated on James Ross, Seymour, Snow Hill and Vega Islands: the latetr has produced fossils of hadrosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs.

Several scientific bases stand on these islands, notably the Czech 'Mendel Polar Station' on James Ross and the Argentine 'Marambio Base' on Seymour.