Fossils reveal Antarctica warmer than in the past

New discoveries about fossils collected at the East Antarctica of a college student show that the ice-cold region was much more pleasant.

The fossil of ostracods - a small crustacean, belongs to the Dry Valley region in the Antarctic, Transantarctic Mountains - dating back 14 million years ago. This is a rare fossil, showing a three-dimensional image of ostracod's soft anatomy.

The fossil was discovered by Richard Thommasson when he was scanning sediment in research team member Allan Ashworth's laboratory at North Dakota State University.

Because ostracods cannot survive with the current climate of Antarctica, their presence suggests that the southernmost continent is not always as frozen as it is today.

Mark Williams of Leicester University, co-authored with Ashworth in the fossil discovery report in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, said: 'The current condition in Antarctica has an average annual temperature of minus 25. degree C (minus 13 degrees F). It is not a condition where an animal like ostracods can survive. '

The ostracod fossil from Dry Valleys of Antarctica is less than 1 mm in length, but preserves soft tissues including the legs and mouth.The first part is on the right.(Photo: Mark Williams, Leicester University)

The authors argue that ostracods and its habitat are the last vestiges of the Tundra ecosystem, similar to those found in Patagonia, that have prospered in the Antarctic coast, before a cold wave caused the Antarctic climate to change as we see it today.

Geologists theorized that today's Antarctic land was once part of another continent closer to the equator - hundreds of millions of years ago. The co-author of the David Marchant study at Boston University said that for that reason, the warm climate suitable for ostracods could have survived 'as Antarctica gradually diverged to its current position.'

Marchant estimated that summer temperatures in Antarctica could be 30.6 degrees F (17 degrees C) higher than the current temperature.

This warm period ended when giant ice sheets began to appear in Antarctica about 34 million years ago, at the end of the Eocene. Marchant told LiveScience that the ribbons expanded and shrunk until 14 million years ago, during the Miocene, when a fierce cold wave emerged and turned the Tundra climate into an environment 'that now looks like Mars'.

Marchant said climatologists also could not explain what caused the intense cold.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.