14 million year-old lost world found in Antarctica

[UM-Bot]

Image credit: Calee Allen / NOAA

A lost world has been found in Antarctica, preserved just the way it was when it was frozen in time some 14 million years ago.

The fossils of plants and animals high in the mountains is an extremely rare find in the continent, one that also gives a glimpse of a what could be there in a century or two as the planet warms.

View: Full Article | Source: The Telegraph

[Madeleine]

Hmm this is possibly the now third time i've said something along these line but i just cannot resist this one! It sounds like the opening to aieln vs predator. lol.

[Blueguardian]

Although this is causing some damage to the ecosystem of Antarctica I cannot help but feel excited to see what they find.

[:PsYKoTiC:BeHAvIoR:]

Hmm this is possibly the now third time i've said something along these line but i just cannot resist this one! It sounds like the opening to aieln vs predator. lol.

Minus the bloodshed.

[crystal sage]

I was interested to read about the migratory routes to the antartica of 'Stumpy'' the whale..

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=614673

and was wondering what other genetic memories of 'home'' were found in nature....

' Here was an interesting study on fauna leading to theories on possible land connections

http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/biogeog/SIMP940A.htm

Antarctica as a Faunal Migration Route

by George Gaylord Simpson (1940)

1. That the southern lands (at least South America and Australia and possibly also Africa and New Zealand) were once connected by land bridges to Antarctica, and hence with each other through that continent.

2. That they were once all part of the same land mass, which also included Antarctica and which has since been split up by continental drifting.

3. That they were connected with each other more directly by transoceanic bridges, not necessarily involving Antarctica.

4. That they were connected separately to the northern continents, Australia with eastern Asia, Africa with Europe and western Asia, and South America with North America, and the northern continents were united with each other.

These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. It would be possible for two or more of them to be true successively or simultaneously.

The idea is not new, but relatively little attention has been paid to the hypothesis that Antarctica was not merely part of a migration route but also was a center of evolution, particularly for the mammals. The question is different from the principal subject of this paper, but it is pertinent here and must be considered briefly.

All three of the northern continents, North America, Europe, and Asia, show two major and mysterious mammalian invasions. One of these was at about the beginning of the Paleocene. It was also this invasion, by whatever route, that reached South America. It included relatively few of the ancestors of modern mammals. A second invasion occurred around the beginning of the Eocene, and the recent faunas are in the main the highly modified descendants of this Eocene fauna, descendants of which straggled into South America during the Oligocene and flooded in at the end of the Tertiary. The second invasion cannot have come from South America or Australia, and almost surely did not as a whole come from Africa, although certain of its elements were probably elaborated there. Africa had shared also in the first invasion, although the evidence is indirect, and like South America it was a center of evolution for some (but different) elements of that group and later sent their modified descendants northward; but this suggests quite the opposite of its being the source of the second invasion. Although the source is really quite unknown otherwise, the second invasion almost surely did not come from the south, and Antarctica can be almost categorically ruled out on that score.

The first invasion cannot be quite dismissed even in this unsatisfactory and negative way. If these mammals were in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of the Cretaceous, when their immediate and recognizable ancestry must have been somewhere, it is certainly strange that no trace of them has turned up any clearer than the few insectivore-carnivore skulls of the Mongolian Cretaceous. One would expect evidence of them among the many rich deposits of terrestrial reptiles of that time. There is room in the north for lack of discovery, because of facies or because of geographic isolation, and a northern origin is not impossible, but it is tempting to think that Antarctica, unknown paleontologically so far as land animals are concerned, might have been the mysterious source.

The skull of Cryolophosaurus, the first named Antarctic dinosaur.

http://www.geocities.com/stegob/williamhammer.html

A Duck-Billed Dinosaur in Antarctica

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...nyt&emc=rss

Australia's Polar Dinosaurs

http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj/ecenvir.htm

Edited August 14, 2008 by crystal sage

[revolutionist15]

nice

[psyche101]

I was interested to read about the migratory routes to the antartica of 'Stumpy'' the whale..

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=614673

and was wondering what other genetic memories of 'home'' were found in nature....

' Here was an interesting study on fauna leading to theories on possible land connections

http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/biogeog/SIMP940A.htm

Antarctica as a Faunal Migration Route

by George Gaylord Simpson (1940)

The skull of Cryolophosaurus, the first named Antarctic dinosaur.

http://www.geocities.com/stegob/williamhammer.html

A Duck-Billed Dinosaur in Antarctica

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...nyt&emc=rss

Australia's Polar Dinosaurs

http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj/ecenvir.htm

I Like Leaellynasaura Named after the discoverers daughter wasn't it?

Turtles come to mind immediately as a species that returns to the same place they were born to lay eggs.

[Oen Anderson]

Is it just me, or does the picture on the left on the (Full Article) look like a crater?