Warm Snap Turned Antarctica Green Around the Edges
Thawed-out continent was lined with trees 15 million years ago, study says.
Antarctica developed its ice sheets about 34 million years ago. But during the more recent warm period, the interior landscape would've resembled tundra found in parts of modern-day Chile and New Zealand, and the coasts would've been lined with beeches and a type of conifer.
The surprising evidence comes from "abundant" remains of leaf waxes in sediment cores taken from deep beneath Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf, said study leader Sarah Feakins, a biogeochemist at the University of Southern California.
The sediments had blown off Antarctic soils into the ocean during the Miocene, a mild period in Earth's history between about 15 and 20 million years ago. (Explore a prehistoric time line.)
Not only were the leaf wax remnants
