Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 15 views

    2020 04 Ancient Rainforest Antarctica Warmer Prehistoric

    Uploaded by

    G o
    Researchers discovered evidence of a temperate rainforest near the South Pole 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Analysis of preserved roots, pollen, and spores found in sediment cores indicate the forest was similar to rainforests currently found in New Zealand. This suggests average temperatures were around 12 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide levels were higher than expected, challenging climate models of the period. The findings provide evidence that the climate was much warmer than previously thought, even allowing for forest growth during months of polar darkness without sunlight.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    2020 04 Ancient Rainforest Antarctica Warmer Prehistoric

    Uploaded by

    G o
    15 views6 pages
    Researchers discovered evidence of a temperate rainforest near the South Pole 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Analysis of preserved roots, pollen, and spores found in sediment cores indicate the forest was similar to rainforests currently found in New Zealand. This suggests average temperatures were around 12 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide levels were higher than expected, challenging climate models of the period. The findings provide evidence that the climate was much warmer than previously thought, even allowing for forest growth during months of polar darkness without sunlight.

    Original Title

    2020-04-ancient-rainforest-antarctica-warmer-prehistoric

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Researchers discovered evidence of a temperate rainforest near the South Pole 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Analysis of preserved roots, pollen, and spores found in sediment cores indicate the forest was similar to rainforests currently found in New Zealand. This suggests average temperatures were around 12 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide levels were higher than expected, challenging climate models of the period. The findings provide evidence that the climate was much warmer than previously thought, even allowing for forest growth during months of polar darkness without sunlight.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    15 views6 pages

    2020 04 Ancient Rainforest Antarctica Warmer Prehistoric

    Uploaded by

    G o
    Researchers discovered evidence of a temperate rainforest near the South Pole 90 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. Analysis of preserved roots, pollen, and spores found in sediment cores indicate the forest was similar to rainforests currently found in New Zealand. This suggests average temperatures were around 12 degrees Celsius and carbon dioxide levels were higher than expected, challenging climate models of the period. The findings provide evidence that the climate was much warmer than previously thought, even allowing for forest growth during months of polar darkness without sunlight.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 6

    Traces of ancient rainforest in Antarctica

    point to a warmer prehistoric world

    April 1 2020, by Hayley Dunning

    1/6
    Map of the drill site and how to continents were arranged 90 million years ago.
    Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut

    Researchers have found evidence of rainforests near the South Pole 90


    million years ago, suggesting the climate was exceptionally warm at the
    time.

    A team from the UK and Germany discovered forest soil from the
    Cretaceous period within 900 km of the South Pole. Their analysis of the
    preserved roots, pollen and spores shows that the world at that time was a
    lot warmer than previously thought.

    The discovery and analysis were carried out by an international team of


    researchers led by geoscientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute
    Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany and
    including Imperial College London researchers. Their findings are
    published today in Nature.

    Co-author Professor Tina van de Flierdt, from the Department of Earth


    Science & Engineering at Imperial, said: "The preservation of this
    90-million-year-old forest is exceptional, but even more surprising is the
    world it reveals. Even during months of darkness, swampy temperate
    rainforests were able to grow close to the South Pole, revealing an even
    warmer climate than we expected."

    The work also suggests that the carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the
    atmosphere were higher than expected during the mid-Cretaceous
    period, 115-80 million years ago, challenging climate models of the
    period.

    2/6
    Professor Tina van de Flierdt and Dr Johann Klages work on the sample of
    ancient soil. Credit: T. Ronge, Alfred-Wegener-Institut

    The mid-Cretaceous was the heyday of the dinosaurs but was also the
    warmest period in the past 140 million years, with temperatures in the
    tropics as high as 35 degrees Celsius and sea level 170 metres higher
    than today.

    However, little was known about the environment south of the Antarctic
    Circle at this time. Now, researchers have discovered evidence of a
    temperate rainforest in the region, such as would be found in New
    Zealand today. This was despite a four-month polar night, meaning for a
    third of every year there was no life-giving sunlight at all.

    3/6
    The presence of the forest suggests average temperatures were around 12
    degrees Celsius and that there was unlikely to be an ice cap at the South
    Pole at the time.

    The evidence for the Antarctic forest comes from a core of sediment
    drilled into the seabed near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers in West
    Antarctica. One section of the core, that would have originally been
    deposited on land, caught the researchers' attention with its strange
    colour.

    The team CT-scanned the section of the core and discovered a dense
    network of fossil roots, which was so well preserved that they could
    make out individual cell structures. The sample also contained countless
    traces of pollen and spores from plants, including the first remnants of
    flowering plants ever found at these high Antarctic latitudes.

    Illustration of the Antarctic rainforest. Credit: Alfred-Wegener-Institut/James


    McKay

    4/6
    To reconstruct the environment of this preserved forest, the team
    assessed the climatic conditions under which the plants' modern
    descendants live, as well as analysing temperature and precipitation
    indicators within the sample.

    They found that the annual mean air temperature was around 12 degrees
    Celsius; roughly two degrees warmer than the mean temperature in
    Germany today. Average summer temperatures were around 19 degrees
    Celsius; water temperatures in the rivers and swamps reached up to 20
    degrees; and the amount and intensity of rainfall in West Antarctica
    were similar to those in today's Wales.

    To get these conditions, the researchers conclude that 90 million years


    ago the Antarctic continent was covered with dense vegetation, there
    were no land-ice masses on the scale of an ice sheet in the South Pole
    region, and the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere was far
    higher than previously assumed for the Cretaceous.

    Lead author Dr. Johann Klages, from the Alfred Wegener Institute
    Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, said: "Before our
    study, the general assumption was that the global carbon dioxide
    concentration in the Cretaceous was roughly 1000 ppm. But in our
    model-based experiments, it took concentration levels of 1120 to 1680
    ppm to reach the average temperatures back then in the Antarctic."

    More information: Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during


    peak Cretaceous warmth, Nature (2020). DOI:
    10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5 , nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2148-5

    5/6
    Provided by Imperial College London

    Citation: Traces of ancient rainforest in Antarctica point to a warmer prehistoric world (2020,
    April 1) retrieved 29 January 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2020-04-ancient-rainforest-
    antarctica-warmer-prehistoric.html

    This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private
    study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is
    provided for information purposes only.

    6/6

    Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

    You might also like