All  

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ

Ancient Origins Tour IRAQ Mobile

Reconstruction of the West Antarctic Turonian–Santonian temperate rainforest. The painting is based on palaeofloral and environmental information inferred from palynological, geochemical, sedimentological and organic biomarker data obtained from cores 9R and 10R at site PS104_20-2. T            Source: Alfred-Wegener-Institut/J. McKay / CC BY 4.0

Traces of Rainforest in Antarctica Point to a Warmer Prehistoric World

Print

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.

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 meters 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.

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.

Conditions for an Antarctic Rainforest

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 color.

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.

To reconstruct the environment of this preserved forest, the team assessed the climatic conditions under which the plants' modern descendants live, as well as analyzing 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.

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

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

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."

Top image: Reconstruction of the West Antarctic Turonian–Santonian temperate rainforest. The painting is based on palaeofloral and environmental information inferred from palynological, geochemical, sedimentological and organic biomarker data obtained from cores 9R and 10R at site PS104_20-2. T            Source: Alfred-Wegener-Institut/J. McKay / CC BY 4.0

The article, originally titled ‘Traces of ancient rainforest in Antarctica point to a warmer prehistoric world’ was originally published on Science Daily.

Source: Imperial College London. "Traces of ancient rainforest in Antarctica point to a warmer prehistoric world." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 April 2020. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200401130825.htm

References

Johann P. Klages, Ulrich Salzmann, Torsten Bickert, Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, Karsten Gohl, Gerhard Kuhn, Steven M. Bohaty, Jürgen Titschack, Juliane Müller, Thomas Frederichs, Thorsten Bauersachs, Werner Ehrmann, Tina van de Flierdt, Patric Simões Pereira, Robert D. Larter, Gerrit Lohmann, Igor Niezgodzki, Gabriele Uenzelmann-Neben, Maximilian Zundel, Cornelia Spiegel, Chris Mark, David Chew, Jane E. Francis, Gernot Nehrke, Florian Schwarz, James A. Smith, Tim Freudenthal, Oliver Esper, Heiko Pälike, Thomas A. Ronge, Ricarda Dziadek.  Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during peak Cretaceous warmthNature, 2020; 580 (7801): 81 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2148-5

 

Comments

Graham Hancock wrote about this 25 years ago (1995) whilst examining Rose & Rand Flem-Ath’s crustal displacement theory. Not so sure why this is being hailed as a new discovery. Confirmation is the best I can offer.

In the Gondwana breakup, starting in the Jurassic, it was the other continental masses such as Australia which moved north largely causing the separation.

Antarctica was hovering about the South Pole then as it is now. It did not drift southward in the time since. One may see this Gondwanan breakup written in the relictual flora of Australia and South America etc, as well as the fauna.

The earliest known marsupial mammals appear outside Australia. Even the earliest eucalyptus fossils are from South America and, later, New Zealand.

I’m sure that 90 million years ago Antarctica wasn’t in the same geological position as it is today. Probably was further north where the climate was warmer and then drifted south to it’s current position.

 

Vivian

Mammals were around in the Cretaceous, not just "reptiles." As an Australian who lives well-inland, rather than on the coast where most of the human population is found here, I know from experience that some mammals do rather better in hot climates. Indeed, hotter climates than yours, most probably.

Not sure where you are going with this… I mean yeah the earth was hotter. Great. But what worked for reptiles isn't going to work for mammals that have evolved around much lower temperatures. 
 

I'm not a climate “panicker” but its being very oleaginous to think that either the climate isnt changing or that we know exactly why it is.

Pages

ancient-origins's picture

Ancient-Origins

This is the Ancient Origins team, and here is our mission: “To inspire open-minded learning about our past for the betterment of our future through the sharing of research, education, and knowledge”.

At Ancient Origins we believe that one of... Read More

Next article