LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have drilled deep into Antarctica's icy wastes and come up with vital clues about the history of the region and the risks from global warming.
In sub-zero temperatures, blizzards and gales, a team of international geologists completed the first leg of their survey late last year. On Tuesday they gathered to present their findings.
"The project's aim was to fill in critical gaps in the geological record of the region and help piece together a comprehensive history of how the Earth's largest ice sheet developed," Professor Peter Barrett, chief scientist in the Cape Roberts Project, told reporters.
Among the debris brought to the surface, the team discovered the fossilised remains of 15 species believed to have disappeared millions of years ago and a whole range of other creatures-mainly molluscs and micro-organisms from the past two million years.
"To live here the waters must have warmed sufficiently ... These organisms give us clues as to how climate change has affected the ice sheet and how it might change again," the New Zealand geologist said.
Lush forests covered Antarctica 100 million years ago when dinosaurs roamed there. The polar seas began to freeze about 65 million years later.
Now some scientists believe the greenhouse effect is causing the region's massive ice shelves-some as large as Spain and holding millions of tonnes of frozen water-to melt, with possibly catastrophic results.
Barrett said the impact of global warming was a concern but played down fears that a deluge on a Biblical scale was imminent. "No one thinks the ice sheets are going to melt in the next hundred years. But on the scale of hundreds of years, it is something we should be worrying about," he said.
His team plans to go back to the Antarctic later this year, hoping to dig even deeper into the sea bed and even further back into the region's monumental past.
"It's extremely important to look back as far as possible. Antarctica has been very poorly covered ...The data we have uncovered will feed into global climate models," Barrett said.
The team sank their drill through the ice at Cape Roberts and through 200 metres (650 feet) of water before burrowing deep into the sea bed to bring up tonnes of sludge and sediment.
The drilling rig weighed 50 metric tons and rested on a shelf of ice no more than a metre or so (a few feet) thick. When a storm caused the ice to crack, producing alarming metre-wide (three-foot wide) fractures, the team decided to abandon its studies.
"There was an air of concern, not panic," Ken Woolfe, a geologist who worked on the project, said. "You could see seals swimming about through the cracks...we took the decision to beat a tactical retreat and to bring the rig back on to land.
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