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Ricker Hills

hills in Antarctica

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ7331912 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Ricker Hills (75°41′S 159°10′E) are a group of mainly ice-free hills, about 9 nautical miles (17 km; 10 mi) long, lying just west of Hollingsworth Glacier in Antarctica.

They were mapped and named by the Southern Party of the New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition (NZGSAE), 1962–63, for J.F. Ricker, a geologist with the party.

Location

The Ricker Hills are just west of the Hollingsworth Glacier, which flows along their east side, and south of the David Glacier. The Antarctic Plateau is to their west and south, with various scattered peaks or nunataks emerging from the ice.

Features

Features of the Ricker Hills include the Morris Basin in the north and Benson Knob in the south.

Morris Basin

75°39′S 159°09′E.

A basin of about 9 square nautical miles (31 km2; 12 sq mi) in area in the north part of the Ricker Hills, in the Prince Albert Mountains, Victoria Land.

The south portion of the basin is ice free but the north portion is occupied by a large lobe of ice.

Mapped by USGS from surveys and United States Navy air photos, 1956-62.

Named by US-ACAN for Robert W. Morris, biologist at McMurdo Station in the 1965-66 and 1966-67 seasons.

Benson Knob

75°45′S 159°17′E.

A distinctive rock knob, 1,540 metres (5,050 ft) high, at the south extremity of Ricker Hills in the Prince Albert Mountains, Victoria Land.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ricker Hills” is hills in Antarctica. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ricker, Hills and hills, not as a finished interpretation.

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, 1956, 1965, 1966—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Ricker, Hills and hills is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “hills in Antarctica” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7331912. Authority coordinates are -75.683, 159.167. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1962, 1956, 1965 and 1966.

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 “Ricker Hills” 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.