Antarctica is the coldest place on Earth. The Katabotic winds howl around it’s gale thrashed coast. But once its green valley’s were filled with thriving Glossopteris Pine and Beach forests. How do we know this?
“Scott of the Antarctic” was the first to discover tell tale fossils on the Beardmore Glacier in 1912. Since then Petrified tree stumps and leaves, bones of dinosaurs, marsupials and fossil rich coal has been discovered in its, now, hostile environment.
According to classic geology, this previous lush age thrived millions of years ago in the
Permian age. The shifting Antarctic continent, inexorably plodding at millimetres per year, gradually moved into icy hibernation. The flora and fauna were iced over, slowly fossilized and left to slumber. Just as in Greenland and Canada with their fossil forests!
Antarctica desert but 3KM thick ice sheet?
But wait! This formation of a three kilometre thick ice sheet is no meagre feat. Antarctica contains ninety percent of the world’s ice, yet some of Antarctica’s valleys are the driest places on earth. Antarctica is technically considered a desert.
Incredibly little snow falls in the interior (five centimetres per year rain equivalent) where the ice sheet is considerably thicker. Katabotic snow storms reside only on the coast where the thinner ice. Contradiction? Nevertheless, classic Geologists argue that, eons of time can explain away these ice sheet anomalies.
