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McMahon Glacier

glacier in Victoria Land, Antarctica

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 3, 2026
Entity authorityQ6802275
Source-derived summary

McMahon Glacier (70°45′S 165°45′E) is a glacier about 18 nautical miles (33 km; 21 mi) long in the Anare Mountains of Victoria Land, Antarctica.

It drains north between the Buskirk Bluffs and Gregory Bluffs into Nielsen Fjord.

Name

The McMahon Glacier was named by the Antarctic Names Committee of Australia (ANCA) for F.P. McMahon, Logistics Officer with the Australian Antarctic Division, who led a number of expeditions to Macquarie Island and was second-in-charge of several expeditions to Antarctica.

Location

The McMahon Glacier forms in the Anare Mountains to the west of Tiger Peak and flows north past Buskirk Bluffs to the west and Gregory Bluffs to the east to enter the Nielsen Fjord, which leads to the Pacific Ocean.

Cape North is at the west of the fjord's mouth, and the mouth of the Kirkby Glacier is at the east.

Features

Buskirk Bluffs

70°47′S 165°39′E.

A sheer rock bluff on the west side of McMahon Glacier.

Named by the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition (ANARE) for Maj. H. Buskirk, United States Air Force, official American observer with ANARE (Thala Dan), 1962, which explored this area.

Gregory Bluffs

70°44′S 165°49′E.

High granite bluffs that form the east side of Nielsen Fjord.

Named by ANARE for C. Gregory, geologist with the AN ARE (Thala Dan) cruise.

Editorial summary

“McMahon Glacier” enters the record as glacier in Victoria Land, Antarctica. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what McMahon, Glacier and glacier can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1962—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around McMahon, Glacier and glacier.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“McMahon Glacier” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, McMahon, Glacier and glacier provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6802275. Authority coordinates are -70.750, 165.750. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from McMahon Glacier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.