Antarctica was not always so cold and remote. Geologist Molly Miller of Vanderbilt University discovered, in the Beardmore Glacier area of Antarctica, the remains of three ancient deciduous forests complete with fossils of fallen leafs scattered around the petrified tree stumps “These were not scrubby little things,” Miller said. “These were big trees.”
Unlike any trees today, Glossopteris trees lived in stands as thick as almost a thousand per acre just 20 or 25 degrees from the South Pole, latitude at which today they would have received no sunlight for half the year. This powerful evidence that when they grew the Antarctic was in a semi tropical zone. As for what they looked like, Glossopteris tapered upwards like a Christmas tree. Instead of needles, they had large, broad lance-shaped leaves that fell to the ground at the end of summer.
Miller says they lived at a time when the Antarctic climate was much warmer. Some are estimated to have attained heights of 80 feet (24.6 meters), based on their trunk diameter. Miller, Tim Cully and graduate student Nichole Knepprath came upon the three stands of the lost forests in December 2003.These trees are alive today but only grow in warm moist areas such as Queensland Australia.
The change that caused the electric fossilization of the trees probably resulted in a dramatic effect which most likely caused severe climate change . The same process would have destroyed the fossils of marsupials discovered underneath Antarctic ice.
