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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

An international team of researchers supported by the National Science Foundation will journey to Antarctica this month [phys.org] to search for evidence that the now-frozen continent may have been the starting point for some important species that roam the Earth today.

Millions of years ago Antarctica was a warm and lush environment ruled by dinosaurs and inhabited by a great diversity of life. But today, the fossils that could reveal what prehistoric life was like are mostly buried under the ice of the harsh landscape, leaving the part that Antarctica played in the evolution of vertebrates (backboned animals) as one of the great unknowns in the history of life.

Leading the team are paleontologists from the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, The University of Texas at Austin, Ohio University and the American Museum of Natural History. Other collaborators include scientists from museums and universities across the U.S., Australia and South Africa.

The monthlong expedition will begin Feb. 2. Aided by helicopters, scientists will conduct research on James Ross Island and other nearby islands off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the few spots on Antarctica where fossil-bearing rocks are accessible.

"Ninety-nine percent of Antarctica is covered with permanent ice," said Matthew Lamanna, paleontologist and assistant curator at the Carnegie Museum. "We're looking for fossils of backboned animals that were living in Antarctica at the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs, so we can learn more about how the devastating extinction that happened right afterward might have affected polar ecosystems."

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