An international team of scientists, with the support of the National Science Foundation of the United States, is preparing to travel to Antarctica to search for evidence that the currently frozen continent could in the past be the starting point for the development of many of the species of fauna that currently populate the Earth. And it is that millions of years ago, Antarctica was a warm and fertile ecosystem ruled by dinosaurs and inhabited by a great diversity of living beings. The problem is that today, most of the fossils that could bring to light all that variety of prehistoric life lie buried under tons of ice . In this way, the role that the continent played in the evolution of vertebrates remains one of the most unknown chapters in biology and paleontology. Leading the scientific team are paleontologists from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Ohio and the American Museum of Natural History, along with other collaborators from museums and universities in Australia and South Africa.
Today, February 2, scientists will arrive by helicopter to James Ross Island and other nearby islands to begin research in this area neighboring the Antarctic Peninsula , one of the points on the continent where rocks containing fossils are accessible. Paleontologist and Carnegie Museum Curator Matthew Lamanna explains that “99% of Antarctica is covered in perpetual ice. We are looking for fossils of vertebrate animals that lived there towards the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. We want to know more about the devastating extinction that followed and how it could affect polar ecosystems “.
Specifically, the team looks for fossils from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene , a period between 100 and 40 million years ago that includes the end of the Age of Dinosaurs and the beginning of the Age of Mammals . In this way they hope to find out if Antarctica was crucial and special in the origins of some modern birds and mammals or if, on the contrary, the evolution of species on that continent was similar to that of other parts of the planet. The expedition is part of the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Research Project or AP3, funded by the National Science Foundation. During a previous expedition to the same area carried out by Argentine paleontologists, they found fossils of a species of birds that indicate that Antarctica could be special in the evolution of these animals. It was a bird relatively related to today’s ducks and geese , and it is the only case of a bird included in a modern group that lived during the age of non-avian dinosaurs. The discoveries of the team that begins its journey today can be followed on the web http://antarcticdinos.org/ and on Twitter @antarcticdinos.
Credit image: © Stefan Christmann / Corbis
