Imagine a time machine that could whisk you back to the age of the dinosaurs. Suddenly, you find yourself in a dense, swampy forest, with insects buzzing between flowers, ferns, and conifers.
Believe it or not, you’re standing in West Antarctica.
Scientists in Germany and the UK have now discovered amber there for the first time – the fossilized ‘blood’ of ancient coniferous trees that once grew on Earth’s southernmost continent between 83 and 92 million years ago.
Along with fossils of roots, pollen, and spores, the amber provides some of the best evidence yet that a mid-Cretaceous, swampy rainforest existed near the South Pole, and that this prehistoric environment was “dominated by conifers“, similar to forests in New Zealand and Patagonia today.