| Summary: | Among the marvellous fossils retrieved from Seymour Island—a thin strip of land near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, is a giant penguin that lived forty million years ago. Called simply ‘Nordenskiöld’s giant penguin’, after one of the great early Antarctic explorers, it is not the kind of animal you would like to meet down a dark alley late at night. Standing at nearly the height of an average man and with a long beak to match, it was much taller than the modern Emperor penguin. Nordenskiöld’s giant penguin was a portent of a cooling climate. Its bones—many of which now reside in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London—have been found within the Eocene mudrocks of Seymour Island. This island holds a special affection for palaeoclimatologists. It was here, in the late nineteenth century, that some of the first Antarctic fossils were found. These give a glimpse of what that continent was like before it became an icy wilderness. Seventy million years ago, wide Cretaceous forests, inhabited by dinosaurs, flourished in Antarctica. Even as little as fifty million years ago, the kinds of tree and shrub that thrive today in Patagonia once covered the hills and slopes of the mountainous Antarctic Peninsula. Their fossilized remains are found in the rocks of Seymour Island. In the summer months the island is warmed by the faint Antarctic sun, its surface melting like a chocolate cake at a picnic. The resulting muddy quagmire is worth persevering with. It yields the most wonderful fossils of ancient plants, among them Auracaria, the warmth-loving monkey-puzzle tree. Antarctic scientists have another, ulterior motive for visiting Seymour Island; those in the know are aware that the Argentine Base at Marambio is famous for its steaks. They are the best on the continent, and everyone hopes to get invited in. How then did Antarctica change from a continent of lush forests to a frozen wasteland? After all, this part of ancient Gondwana had already drifted over the southern polar region during the ...
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