Warm water fossils in antarctica, according to a report in BBC News Online, 19 April 2007. Researchers in the Antarctic Drilling (Andrill) Program have extracted a 1,285 metre (4,215ft) long core of rock and sediment from the Ross Ice Shelf. The core indicates that the ice shelf has fluctuated in size about 60 times as climate varied in the past. The researchers found several layers of diatoms – microscopic plants with distinctive silica shells. Some are previously unknown to science, but others are known species that live in much warmer waters well to the present north of Antarctica. Ross Powell, from Northern Illinois University commented, “Our initial interpretations tell us that there were times when it was very cold and the ice was very big – and those conditions were in the youngest and the oldest part of the core, and then in between – over the period of Earth history we call the Pliocene – we are looking at something that was much warmer, when the ice was much more dynamic, going backwards and forwards; and in between the ice being there, there was open water with the diatoms coming in.” The Andrill project plans to drill another core that goes to the Miocene era, which was even warmer than the Pliocene.
Editorial Comment: These findings fit with lots of other evidences that Antarctica’s climate (and planet Earth’s) has gone up and down through the ages e.g. red soil, dinosaur fossils, coal, etc. This fits with the Biblical history of the world, which tells us that the word started out very good, with a mild moist climate. Extremes of temperature are not mentioned until after Noah’s flood and earth’s climate has yo-yoed since. (Ref. global warming, microbes, polar)
Evidence News 13 June 2007