Frozen in Time: Prehistoric Life in Antarctica

FROZEN

IN TIME

FROZEN

IN TIME

PREHISTORIC LIFE IN ANTARCTICA

JEFFREY D STILWELL AND JOHN A LONG

© Jeffrey Stilwell and John Long 2011

All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO PUBLISHING for all permission requests.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Stilwell, Jeffrey D.

Frozen in time : prehistoric life in Antarctica / by

Jeffrey D. Stilwell and John A. Long.

9780643096356 (hbk.)

9780643104013 (epdf)

9780643104020 (epub)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Fossils – Antarctica.

Paleontology – Antarctica.

Environmental geology – Antarctica.

Climatic changes – Antarctica.

Antarctica – Discovery and exploration

Long, John A., 1957–

560.989

Published by

CSIRO PUBLISHING

150 Oxford Street (PO Box 1139)

Collingwood VIC 3066

Australia

Front cover image: courtesy Jeffrey Stilwell.

Back cover images: courtesy Cara Fritz, David Cantrill, Rodney Feldmann, Jeffrey Stilwell.

Title page image: An extremely windy day at Minna Bluff, McMurdo Sound, East Antarctica. Jeffrey Stilwell examines blocks of fossiliferous sandstone of Eocene age containing wood – probably southern beech. Photo: Rich Levy.

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CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgements

1    The cold, barren land we call Antarctica

2    A continent discovered

3    The fossil pioneers

4    Antarctica’s oldest fossils

5    The age of fish and ferns

6    A time of southern coal swamps

7    Giant amphibians and hairy reptiles

8    Volcanic lakes and early dinosaurs

9    When dinosaurs ruled

10  When giant reptiles swam in southern seas

11  Killer birds, giant penguins and early mammals

12  The big chill: from paradise to polar ice

13  Life today in the frozen south

Endnotes

Glossary

References and further reading

Index

The Transantarctic Mountains. In the background is Mt Erebus and Mt Terror on Ross island. Photo: .Jeffrey Stilwell.

PREFACE

No other continent on Earth has undergone such radical environmental changes as Antarctica. In its transition from rich biodiversity to the barren, cold land of blizzards we see today, Antarctica provides a dramatic case study of how subtle changes in continental positioning can affect living communities, and how rapidly the catastrophic changes can come about. Antarctica has gone from paradise to polar ice in just a few million years of time, a geological blink of an eye when we consider the real age of Earth.

In this book we have endeavoured to present an overview of the fossil record of Antarctica framed within its changing environmental settings, keeping in mind that some parts of the Antarctic geologic column are better represented than others – we are at the mercy of a small percentage of rock exposure (not all containing fossils) in a deeply frozen land.

In telling the story of Antarctica’s prehistoric past, we have chosen to group sequences of sedimentary rocks that contain fossils representative of similar past environments, with each chapter providing a window into a past time and environment on the continent. We have tried to reconstruct Antarctica’s evolving animal and plant communities as accurately as its fossil record permits.

In order to demonstrate the significance of some of Antarctica’s fossils, there is also some discussion of similar faunas from adjoining continents, as these were each an integral sector of the wider ranging, more extensive faunal and floral provinces. Comparisons with the fossil faunas of South America, Australia, ‘Zealandia’, India, and South Africa are critical to elucidating the big picture of Antarctica’s evolving biodiversity.

The story of how fossils were first discovered in Antarctica is a triumph of human endeavour. It continues today with modern expeditions going out to remote sites every year to fill in more of the missing parts of the continent’s great jigsaw of life. The heroic nature of the early exploration of Antarctica gives us an appreciation of how our knowledge of the prehistory of the continent was achieved. Many brave people endured harsh conditions to collect fossils. Some, like Robert Falcon Scott and his polar party, paid the ultimate price with their lives.

For many decades the inhospitable landscape of Antarctica prevented scientific parties from reaching its most remote localities, so the collection of fossil and rock specimens was often an afterthought to exploration. Yet, although some of the early explorers were instrumental in unveiling the first glimpses of the palaeontology of Antarctica, only in the last few decades have advances in polar transportation allowed scientists to undertake systematic collections of fossils from regions well outside the helicopter ranges of the base stations. Because of these advances in logistics, palaeontologists are able to penetrate deeper into Antarctica’s frozen secrets. We know now that some isolated regions of the icy continent are literally paved with fossils, such as horizons with shells composed of mother-of-pearl that shimmer and glisten in the sun like jewels.

As the story of Antarctica’s prehistoric past is revealed chapter by chapter, there are also a number of boxes that give background information about subjects raised in the text. We hope these additional windows of scientific information enable most questions about the general principles of palaeontology to be easily understood. There is also a glossary of scientific terms at the end of the book, along with a comprehensive list of both scientific and general references for further reading.

Dr Jeffrey Stilwell

Professor John Long

The ‘Ice Pinnacles’ of McMurdo Sound with exposed subfossil sea floor remains, many thousands of years old. photo: .Jeffrey Stilwell.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our current state of knowledge of the evolutionary history of Antarctic biotas reflects the hard work and dedication of scores of researchers from the 19th century to more recent times. More often than not the researchers have faced harsh conditions during the many expeditions that have taken place since the first fossil – a fragment of wood – was discovered by American researcher James Eights in 1830.

This book was made possible by the gracious support of many world governments and scientists, who are eager to know what ancient life forms existed on the frozen continent from the Cambrian to the present. With persistence and luck, we will undoubtedly fill in more gaps in the fossil record of Antarctica, and perhaps even extend it to the Precambrian sometime this century.

We thank and appreciate the support of the following individuals and their respective institutions: renowned artists Bill Stout (Pasadena, California) and Tony Windberg (Perth, Australia); Bill and Virginia Zinsmeister (Purdue University, Indiana), who made it possible for Jeffrey Stilwell as a student to research Cretaceous and Cenozoic Antarctic biotas; Pat Quilty (University of Tasmania, Hobart); Betty Thompson, Mary Walters, Ben Doherty, Steve Morton, Draga Gelt, Marion Anderson, Jenny Kain, Ray Cas, Patricia Komarower and Pat Vickers-Rich (Monash University, Melbourne); Brian Pump (formerly of James Cook University, Townsville); David Cantrill (Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne); Sean Jago (Abbotsford, Melbourne); Gavin Young (ANU, Canberra); Alex Ritchie (Canberra, Australia); Bert Rowell (University of Kansas, USA); Rod Feldmann (Kent State University, Kent, Ohio); Mike Woodburne (Flagstaff, Arizona); Christopher Consoli and Phil O’Brien (Geoscience Australia, Canberra); Erich Fitzgerald, Tom Rich and Brian Choo (Museum Victoria, Melbourne); Eduardo Olivero (CADIC-CONICET, Ushuaia, Argentina); Roberto Scasso (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina); Sergio Marenssi (Instituto Antarctica, Argentina); Julia Clarke (University of Texas at Austin); Anton Oleinik (Florida Atlantic University); Brian Huber, Mary Parrish and Thomas Jorstad (Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC); Michael Skrepnick (Okotoks, Alberta); Christian Sidor (University of Washington, Seattle); Margaret Bradshaw (University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand); Sylvia Hope (California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco); David Harwood (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and former students, Steve Bohaty and John Kaser; Richard Levy (GNS Science, Lower Hutt, New Zealand); the late Andrew Grebneff, Mark Hughes and Daphne Lee (University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand); Margaret (Peg) Rees (University of Nevada, Los Angeles); Sue Turner (Brisbane); Paul Willis (‘Catalyst’ presenter, ABC-TV, Sydney) and the Albany Institute of History and Art, New York.

The text and layout of this book was enhanced greatly by the talents of Nick Alexander, Tracey Millen and the team at CSIRO Publishing, Melbourne.

This book is dedicated to polar researchers Professors Bill and Virginia Zinsmeister, Professor Pat Quilty and Sir David Attenborough, who have collectively brought much new knowledge and spirit in our quest to learn more of Antarctica’s ‘deep time’ biotas and environments.

Cockburn Island, viewed from Seymour Island. Photo: .Jeffrey Stilwell.

OPPOSITE: Searching for glacial striations in Paleozoic marble by University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers along the Skelton Glacier. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

1

THE COLD, BARREN LAND WE CALL ANTARCTICA

It’s not getting to the pole that counts. It’s what you learn of scientific value on the way. Plus the fact that you get there and back without being killed.

Admiral Richard Byrd, Alone, 1938.

Antarctica – a word that conjures up feelings of bitter cold, sounds of howling gales, and visions of alien, barren landscapes – the desolate continent at the very bottom of the world. It has been uninhabited and unknown for most of human civilisation – a terra incognita until the 19th century. Poignant stories of human survival, bravery and death punctuate its early history of exploration. Sir Douglas Mawson dubbed it the ‘home of the blizzard’, a title well derived from his meticulous weather recordings which demonstrated that his base camp at Cape Denison had the highest average wind speeds of anywhere on Earth.

Antarctica has the coldest climate recorded on Earth, with extremes as low as –89°C. Today, almost nothing at all lives on the vast expanses of its ice-bound surface. Nearly all the continent is permanently covered by ice and snow, with mean annual surface temperatures hostile to life of any kind apart from a few organisms that can survive in just about any conditions imaginable. Near the edges of the continent life abounds in and around its biomass-rich, icy ocean waters, yet much of this life is ephemeral. The penguins and seals that come to feed during the warmer, summer season are mostly gone by winter, except for some well-adapted, extremophile species, such as the emperor penguin.

Yet Antarctica today is no reflection of what it once was. The evidence for this story is written by the fossils in its rich geological history. The plot is mysterious and unexpected; there is murder on a cosmic scale as global mass extinctions are caused by killer meteorites, and sudden shifts in climate that wipe out high proportions of life. Integral to all of this is the movement of continents and the formation of supercontinents. Antarctica has, for 99 per cent of its geological life spanning 3.8 billion years, been located within the hub of the various configurations of the ancient supercontinents known as Rodinia, Pangaea and Gondwana.

Rock outcrops adjacent to the Skelton Glacier, East Antarctica. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

The story told by Antarctica’s diverse fossil record reveals that it was not always a lifeless continent locked in ice, but has been home to a great pageant of life through time. Its ancient, fossil-rich rocks reveal evidence of previous warmer climates – from the 250-million-year-old coal seams that run through the Transantarctic Mountains – part of the largest coalfields in the world – to the relatively recent non-fossilised wood from forests that grew on the flanks of the Transantarctic Mountains, only a few million years ago. Indeed, Antarctica was once rich in biodiversity, with ancient forests, huge dinosaurs, strange mammals and killer birds. The continent played a pivotal role in the migration and distribution of nearly all life in today’s southern continents.

The astounding fossil record shows that Antarctica – once the central landmass of the supercontinent of Gondwana – is really the key to understanding the evolution and biogeography of most of the living fauna and flora on all the major southern hemisphere landmasses today: South America, Africa, Australia, and the New Zealand microcontinent (‘Zealandia’). As we search further back in time, other landmasses, now subsumed within greater Asia, such as India, parts of China, South-East Asia and the Middle East, even part of the North American continent, were also in contact with Gondwana. Some of these regions still bear the distant biological imprints from this ancient geological alliance.

The fossil record of Antarctica shows us why we have southern beech forests in Australia and New Zealand, how dinosaurs were able to walk to every continent on Earth, and where and how the largest animals on the planet, the great baleen whales, may have evolved. Antarctica’s prehistoric record is also a tale of great tragedy. All that we have discovered from the decades of fossil hunting comes from a very small percentage of accessible rock around the periphery of the continent and in the mountainous regions that poke up through kilometres of ice. We see the demise of the expansive forests and the growth of the immense ice sheets that currently lock up nearly 70 per cent of the planet’s fresh water (and 90 per cent of its ice). The implications of these events continue to have a direct bearing on the global climate and the fate of most of Earth’s living ecosystems.

§

Antarctica is the fifth largest continent on Earth, covering approximately 14 million square km (5.4 million square miles), an area that is one-third larger than Western Europe, about 1.5 times the size of the United States of America, and comparable in size to all of South America. More than 98 per cent of Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet, which is about 5 km thick in some places. This makes Antarctica the world’s highest continent, with an average relief of about 2.3 km above sea level. Many fossil secrets inaccessible below the ice will remain that way, until (or if) in some distant time global warming unlocks long-frozen fossil treasures.

The continent is divided into the vast, flat polar plateau covered by the ice sheet, and the various mountain ranges, the largest being the Transantarctic Mountains which run right across the continent, dividing it into two greatly contrasting parts, the East and West. The Transantarctic Mountains extend from the north-western corner of the Ross Sea to the south-western corner of the Weddell Sea. The tallest mountain range is the Vinson Massif in West Antarctica, reaching nearly 5 km in height.

Less than two per cent of the area of Antarctica has rock exposures available for the geologist to study. The ice sheets bury nearly all of the topographic features of the continent, apart from the coastal outcrops and mountain peaks – known as nunataks – that poke up through the ice sheet in mostly inaccessible areas.

The Wright Valley glacier, Dry Valleys, Transantarctic Mountains. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

Antarctica from space. Courtesy: NASA and dave pape.

Most of the world’s fresh water, approximately 24.5 million cubic kilometres, is currently locked up as ice in Antarctica. The East Antarctic ice sheet, which overlies a stable cratonic block of continental crust, covers 75 per cent of the area of the continent and it contains 80 per cent of Antarctica’s ice by volume. The West Antarctic ice sheet is far less stable as it covers part of the Antarctic Peninsula and a series of islands and embayments, and unites four land units each with a complex geologic history. There are also two large frozen fields of permanent ice floating atop the inlets of the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea on either side of West Antarctica – the Ross Sea Ice Shelf and the Weddell Sea Ice Shelf. There is also the Amery Ice Shelf in Prydz Bay.

Deep waters flow between these land units and the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is a floating ice mass and is held in place by great mountainous peaks. While the current glaciated state of Antarctica commenced some 34 million years ago, the ice in the ice sheets is not that old either, the most ancient being only one million years old – a mere blink of a geologic eye.

Deep blue and blinding white, the Ross Sea Ice Shelf breaks up in the austral summer. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

Sea ice covers much of the waters surrounding the continent for most of the year. Ice flows bring sheets down from the high ground of the continent to sea level. This moves across the sea ice, before calving off into icebergs when it meets warmer water. The ice flows away from the highest points of the continent towards the sea on all sides. One would not think that ice itself flows, but it does due to its plastic nature. At the bottom of the thickest ice sheets plastic deformation takes place in the ice due to immense pressure from above. This makes the ice flow more easily over the bedrock of the continent – hence the reason for the unstable West Antarctic ice sheet.

The ice that is lost to the sea becomes replenished over time by snow inland. If the Antarctic ice were to thaw out entirely, the seas of the world would rise approximately 67 metres. The removal of the ice sheets would reveal a smaller Antarctic continent of around seven million square kilometres.

The break-up of sea ice during the austral summer enables ships to deliver supplies and allows tourist vessels to enjoy the splendour of the deep south. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

Mt Erebus (3794 m) the world’s southern-most active volcano, is the largest of three major volcanoes forming the roughly triangular Ross Island. On the far left is Fang Ridge, representing an earlier crater wall, and behind is Mt Terror. Mt Erebus was erupting when first sighted by Captain James Ross in 1841. Since 1972 there has been continuous lava-lake activity, punctuated by occasional strombolian explosions that eject bombs of lava onto the crater rim. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

The emperor penguin, Aptenodytes forsteri, the world’s largest and heaviest penguin, can grow to more than a metre in height and lives more than 40 years. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

In the past, Antarctica was a hub of volcanic activity, and even today there are still a few active volcanic centres, such as Mt Erebus on Ross Island, Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands Group, and Mt Melbourne on the west coast of the Ross Sea in Northern Victoria Land (which has not erupted for a few hundred years) and several others, which have probably erupted in pre-historical times.¹

Antarctica is technically the world’s largest desert. It almost never rains, apart from the fringing islands near the Antarctic Circle, as most precipitation falls as snow. The atmosphere is very dry, continually desiccating the landscape and any living organisms on it with savage winds. Visitors to Antarctica must drink water constantly to keep dehydration at bay. The climate is not very predictable, and random storms called ‘blizzards’, which can last as long as ten days, happen throughout the year, fuelled by the gravity-fed, intensely bitter, katabatic winds blowing out and rolling off the elevated polar plateau. The seasons fall neatly into the continuous 24-hour daylight of summer, the perpetually dark night of winter, and the relatively brief autumn and spring twilights. The mean monthly temperature at the South Pole in summer is –30°C and in winter it is –54°C. At Vostok Station, the temperature registered an inhospitable –89.6°C in August 1983. As far as humans are concerned this may as well be absolute zero! During summer in the Dry Valleys, the temperature can rise as high as 10°C.

For four months of the year, Antarctica is in total darkness. Due to the absence of pollution, nights in Antarctica are breathtakingly clear with innumerable twinkling stars, along with bright planets and shooting stars or asteroids. These events remind us about the vastness of time and space. If one is lucky, one can witness a natural light show called the aurora australis (or ‘Southern Lights’), which can shimmer away in the Antarctic night sky, mesmerising and amazing those who view this spectacular phenomenon. Even during the short summer season the water under the ice receives less than one per cent of the surface sunlight. The temperature of the water is between –2°C and –4°C and is prevented from freezing by its salt content. Fish living in the icy Antarctic waters have evolved a clever way of adapting to the sub-zero temperatures by incorporating an ‘anti-freeze’ in their blood.

Icicles connecting boulders in the Dry Valleys, Transantarctic Mountains. Photo: John Long.

This sand-blasted rock, called a ‘ventifact’, at Bull Pass, Dry Valleys, has been ceated by violent katabatic winds. Photo: John Long.

Ripples in a dune of sand eroded from the Beacon Sandstone, lower Victoria Valley, Dry Valleys, Transantarctic Mountains. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

The geographic configurations of Antarctica and other southern lands are an historic legacy relating to the ever-changing jigsaw of continental pieces throughout the history of the planet. For much of its existence Antarctica was joined to Africa, Madagascar, South America, India, Australia, ‘Zealandia’, and other smaller continental fragments in the South Pacific. This supercontinent, Gondwana, remained largely in the southern hemisphere throughout the 500 million years of its existence. During the Cambrian Period it was probably situated on the equator or just inside the northern hemisphere. At that time, away from the South Pole, Gondwana was free of ice sheets for much of its history.

The isolated configuration of Antarctica today has led to cooling at the poles and an area of high atmospheric pressure over the continent, which keeps it cold and also prevents precipitation. If warm air or water could find its way into the deep freezer that currently exists today on the continent, the climate of Australia could change very rapidly. It is not surprising that the frozen continent affects its northern neighbours on an almost daily basis – for example, it is the source of the cold fronts that move across continental Austrtalia.

§

Although the discovery of Antarctica by humans dates back a mere 200 years, its geological history extends back to nearly four billion years. Rocks of this age have been identified from Antarctica, yet we know nothing of Earth’s continental configurations at this early time. Around 540 million years ago, we find Antarctica as part of a giant southern supercontinent called Gondwana (meaning ‘land of the Gonds’, a native tribe from India). Originally the name ‘Gondwanaland’ was coined by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess in his book published in 1883. Because of similarities he noted between the geology of the southern continents and peninsular India, he suggested that these landmasses were joined by land bridges that had since sunk beneath the seas. Today we know this is not true as our recent knowledge of Earth’s dynamic processes tells us that the continents, which are merely slabs of Earth’s crust, have been slowly moving, pushed possibly by convection currents within Earth’s mantle – the molten rock layer below the crust. Australia, for example, is currently moving at about six centimetres a year northwards (the rate which human hair grows) and is destined to become another part of the great Asian landmass in about 50 million years time.

A team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln looks for fossils in glacial moraine material in McMurdo Sound. Mt Erebus is in the background. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

Stormy weather at Mt Discovery during summer. Massive snow storms can last for many days with no hope of doing fieldwork. Because of gale-force winds, it is unsafe (and unwise!) to spend too much time taking photographs outside. Bare flesh gets blasted and quickly freezes. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

Rocks

There are three main kinds of rocks: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic.

Igneous rocks are those which erupt from volcanoes or seep out below the ground from molten magma. Rapidly cooled magma forms rocks with a fine crystalline structure (as in basalt) or more coarsely crystalline if slowly cooled (as in granite).

Sedimentary rocks are formed by erosion of other rocks, broken down into grains or particles, then bound together by chemical precipitates, or by compaction through pressure and heat.

Metamorphic rocks are those produced deep under the ground when sedimentary or volcanic rocks are subjected to great heat and pressure. In extreme cases this forms melting and recrystallisation of the original rocks to make new mineral assemblages. Examples of metamorphic rocks are schists formed from intense compaction and high temperature alteration of sedimentary rocks, or gneisses formed by deformation of granitic rocks.

All fossils are preserved in sedimentary rocks – either ‘clastic’ or ‘carbonate’ rocks. Clastic rocks are made up of separate grains called ‘clasts’. Fine-grained particles, such as mud or silt, form mudstones, siltstones or flat-layered fissile rocks like shale once they are buried and compacted, whereas coarser-grained rocks form sandstones or conglomerates.

Carbonate rocks are bound together by calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Limestones are carbonate rocks composed mostly of calcium carbonate yet may also include a proportion of mud, silt or sand. Quite often they are made up of the accumulated remains of many small organisms which have calcitic or aragonitic shells, such as clams, corals or microscopic fossils such as foraminiferans.

The term ‘sandstone’ applies to rocks formed principally of sand grains, and these are defined only by the size of grains, being larger than 0.2 mm and smaller than 2 mm in diameter. Grains larger than 2 mm can form ‘coarse-grained’ sediments like grit and conglomerate. These are formed in high-energy environments where fossils are often broken up before final burial. Sandstones can be made up of grains of various minerals, but quartz and feldspar are the commonest varieties. The finer the sediment particle size, the quieter the environment in which the rock was formed, and the better the chance of a complete, well-preserved fossil skeleton.

Very fine-grained muds accumulate in deep still waters, whereas active high-energy environments such as river beds and tidal zones tend to be dominated by sandstones or coarser-grained rocks. Very coarse sedimentary rocks, such as conglomerates, generally lack good fossils because they were deposited in turbulent conditions where delicate organic remains were broken and not preserved.

Lower Paleozoic metamorphic rocks bordering the Skelton Glacier. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

This mummified seal is at least hundreds if not a few thousand years old. Like many others found in the Dry Valleys coastal regions, it probably died from illness and confusion as it travelled too far inland from the sea. Bacterial decay is very much inhibited in the Antarctic desert environment. Photo: Jeffrey Stilwell.

Antarctica started off as being a part of a very ancient supercontinent called Rodinia. It has been suggested that eastern Gondwana was connected with the northern supercontinent of Laurentia (including much of continental North America) along the Transantarctic Mountains–East Australian margin from as far back as 1.9 billion years ago until around 560 million years ago. Most of the other known continental fragments (including the ancient Baltic regions ‘Baltica’, Siberia, northern China, southern China and ‘Tarim’) were in close proximity to this landmass, so they formed the first supercontinent, named Rodinia after the Russian ‘rodit’ meaning to beget or grow.² The palaeomagnetic record of the rocks is useful here as Earth’s magnetic field will align minute magnetic particles in sedimentary rocks before they are petrified to give us an indication of which way north was at the time the rocks were deposited. By about 600 million years ago continental rifting started to drive the eastern and western sides of Rodinia apart. Gondwana began to rift away from Laurentia, and South China drifted northwards, forming the nascent Palaeo-Pacific Ocean between them.

The break-up of Rodinia at this time had the effect of rotating the Gondwana continents inside-out, forming the larger Gondwana with Africa and South America joined to Antarctica and Australia. This started at the onset of the Cambrian with the coming together of eastern and western Antarctica. By the end of the Cambrian Period, around 500 million years ago, Gondwana had formed and would remain in that configuration until the break-up of major landmasses some 300 million years later, at about the same time dinosaurs started walking the land.

Over the last 500 million years large chunks of continental crust rifted away from the hub of Gondwana to become the individual continents we recognise today. North America, although somewhat controversial as to its early placement as part of Gondwana, was probably the first to drift away about 500 million years ago, followed soon after by parts of Europe, the Middle East and Arabia, then South America, Africa and India. During the Devonian to Carboniferous periods, some 400 to 300 million years ago, changing continental configurations caused a geologic dance of sorts (often called the ‘Waltz of Gondwana’), when the supercontinent progressed southwards with Antarctica poised over the south polar region for the time, and Gondwana eventually plunged into a mass glaciation.

The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty

The International Geophysical Year (IGY) was the brainchild of US scientist Dr Lloyd Berkner. The year 1957 was suggested as sun spot activity would be at a peak so data could be compared with the previously highest year of similar activity in 1932–33. To plan for the forthcoming IGY, the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) was set up in order to forge a scientific unity among all countries working in Antarctica. It aimed to coordinate the research and to oversee the sharing of the scientific results.

Twelve countries took part in the IGY program, resulting in over 40 stations set up in mainland and peninsula Antarctica, and another 20 stations on islands within the Antarctic Circle. The USA set up bases at McMurdo and the South Pole, while Russia set up a base at Mirny, at what was then dubbed the ‘Pole of Inaccessibility’ because it was located at the inland point furthest from all Antarctic coasts. Scott Base was set up as New Zealand’s main station in Antarctica, and the smaller Vanda Station in the Dry Valleys region. A highlight of the International Geophysical Year was the joint British–New Zealand crossing of Antarctica from coast to coast by Sir Vivian Fuchs and Sir Edmund Hillary.

After the success of the IGY