New Discovery: Ancient Antarctica was a Tropical Rainforest

A recent discovery of turtle bones in Antarctica's Seymour Island  has scientists predicting that the continent  was once a lush rain forest. full of a large variety of animal life.

In the Eocene Epoch, which lasted from about 56 to 34 million years ago, Antarctica was still connected to New Guinea and Australia, forming the last vestiges of the southern supercontinent Gondwanaland. The fact that Antarctica was connected by land to these other large regions helped isolate it from colder ocean currents, which allowed the continent to support a tropical rainforest inhabited by turtles and even marsupials, which have also been discovered on Seymour Island.

The discovery is hard to put into perspective when we realize that only 8 inches of rainfall now occurs yearly in the world's largest desert which is famous for ice and penguins, not trees and cold blooded creatures.

The recently discovered turtle bones date back nearly 45 million years and were discovered at Seymour Island. Only several bones from one or two turtles have been discovered, however they are the first of their kind in the region.

Jason McManus via 

Comments

[James]

This is kind of obvious. It is sitting on a MASSIVE oil reserve. Protected only by ice and the Antarctic treaty.

[joe]

SO, probably by the next ice age the countries that are rain forests and deserts now will become covered in ice?

[NecromancerYHVH]

It is my island I am just waiting for it to defrost. Mu, Alantis, Sangrala and all the other fabled cities of high civilization are most likely spawned from anartica. At least that is what I think, tropical millions of years ago how about the last 10 thousand years....

[Gregg Weber]

Antarctica wasn't always at the South Pole due to Continantal Drift. Neither is the heat uniform. The Sun varies in output. Heat from below from radioactivity and the kenitic energy of assembly collisions. Some slight tidal although it was greater a long time ago when the Moon was closer. And never forget the one we don't know about yet.

[David]

Why is this news? Ancient maps show the land mass in Antartica so the dates are either wrong or in 1ad they had x ray technology to map it through the ice. So which one is it? It's not new to think the ice wasn't there. I guess aliens mapped it

[Unfettered]

One theory is a geographic polar shift.