While it’s difficult to picture the South Pole as anything but icy, a groundbreaking discovery reveals that Antarctica was once a lush, swampy rainforest. During a 2017 expedition near West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea, researchers drilled into the seafloor and extracted a sediment core sample near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers. What they found was astonishing.
Published in Nature, CT scans of the sample uncovered remarkably preserved forest soil, pollen, spores, and root systems dating back 90 million years. The level of preservation was so exceptional that scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute could even identify cell structures and pollen from some of the first flowering plants near the South Pole.
“The unusual color of the sediment layer immediately stood out—it was clearly different from the layers above,” said geologist Johann Klages, lead author of the study. “We had discovered a layer that originally formed on land, not in the ocean.”
This finding not only reshapes our understanding of Antarctica’s ancient climate but also highlights a time when the Earth was far warmer, supporting vibrant ecosystems even at the poles. The discovery offers a rare glimpse into a prehistoric world, challenging our perceptions of the planet’s history.