Spitzberg

The Spitzberg , with 500 kilometers in the east of the Greenland, is the largest island of the Archipel of the Svalbard, in the Arctic Ocean. It has a surface of 37.673 km ² and some 280 km length dimensions for 40 to 225 km broad. Its geological layers and its fossils make it possible to better include/understand the Continental drift.

The name " Spitzberg" was historically given to the whole of the archipelago of Svalbard (meaning cold coast), and is sometimes still used this manner nowadays. Spitzberg (and all the archipelago of the Svalbard) depend on the Norway. However, the archipelago governed by a is treated signed in 1920 by 30 countries which confers certain rights of access with other countries. Coal mines worked by Russian interests, are a consequence of this treaty.

More the big city of Spitzberg east Longyearbyen (1.600h), then Barentsburg (850h), Ny-Ålesund (20h), Pyramiden (2h) and the phantom City S like Grumantbyen, Colesbukta or Advent City.

History

The name Spitzberg means " pointed mountains " and was given by the Dutch explorer Willem Barents, which discovered the island by seeking the Passage of the North-East towards the China in 1596. The archipelago seems known by the Russian hunters Pomors as of the 14th century or 15th century, although no solid proof former to the XVIIe century was found. They thought that the country discovered belonged to the Greenland and named it " Grumant". The archipelago was surely also discovered by the Vikings in 1194. The name Svalbard is mentioned for the first time in Sagas Icelanders of the 10th century and 11th centuries, but they refer can be in the island Jan Mayen or even with the Greenland.

The national park Northwest Spitsbergen on the island Spitzberg, contains two of the sources of warm water more in north of planet, by 80° Northern.

An island to go up time

In the Norwegian island of Spitzberg, the slopes of the mountains, with their various layers which are superimposed as the pages of a book, offer to the geologists and to the paleontologists a place of dream to study the history of planet. Old shells of 200 million years were found, so surprisingly preserved there that it was possible to identify their various bodies.

How the animals did live with these latitudes? Which climates, which plants followed one another there?

To answer these questions, the thin layers of the argillaceous schists are as as many pages as the geologists can thin out the leaves of. Interesting also are the successions of rock plates which form the island Axel.

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