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The
Commonwealth Range is a north-south trending
rangeA mountain range is a single, large mass consisting of a succession of mountains or narrowly spaced mountain ridges, with or without peaks, closely related in position, direction, formation, and age; a component part of a mountain system or of a mountain chain...
of rugged mountains, 100 km (60 mi) long, located on the
continentA continent is one of several very large landmasses on Earth. They are generally identified by convention rather than any strict criteria, with seven regions commonly regarded as continents—they are : Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.Plate tectonics is...
of
Antarctica. The range borders the eastern side of
Beardmore GlacierThe Beardmore Glacier in Antarctica is one of the largest glaciers in the world, with a length exceeding 160 km . The glacier is one of the main passages from the Ross Ice Shelf through the Queen Alexandra and Commonwealth ranges of the Transantarctic Mountains to the Antarctic Plateau, and was one...
from the
Ross Ice ShelfThe Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...
to
Keltie GlacierKeltie Glacier is a large Antarctic glacier, 48 km long, draining from Pain Névé southwest around the southern extremity of the Commonwealth Range, and then northwest to enter Beardmore Glacier at Ranfurly Point....
. Its highest peak is Flat Top at 4000 meters or 13,123 feet.
The range was discovered by the British Antarctic Expedition (1907–09) and named by the expedition after the Commonwealth of
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, which gave much assistance to the expedition.