Fossil Find Adds Proof to a much Warmer Past
A North Dakota State University student's discovery of tiny fossils in East Antarctica indicates that much of that continent was a much warmer place many millions of years ago.
What a part of Antarctica might have looked like 70 million years ago. Courtesy National Science Foundation.
The fossils were small crustaceans called ostracods, which dated back to 14 million years ago. According to the LiveScience report, ostracods could never survive in the the current Antarctic climate. In order for them to survive, it probably had to be about 30 degrees F. (17 C) warmer on average. These fossils are probably the last remnants of a warmer Antarctica, before the massive cool down set in. The scientists believe that this find will help them better understand the effects of global warming.
This warmer period started to end when the first continent-sized ice sheets began appearing on Antarctica around 34 million years ago, around the end of the Eocene epoch. These ice sheets expanded and contracted until around 14 million years ago, during the Miocene epoch, when a dramatic cooling took place and transformed the tundra into an environment "that today looks like Mars," co-author David Marchant told LiveScience.
National Geographic News has a more in depth look at this story.
The findings were published in the Report Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
