Engineering: Antarctic life survived the ice age

 

New research questions current understanding of Earth’s glacial history.

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According to new research published in the journal Science this week, springtails, mites, worms and plant life could help solve the mystery of Antarctica’s glacial history.
 
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Massey University New Zealand scientists report that the evolutionary history of Antarctica does not reconcile with scientists’ ideas.

Space to evolve

In today’s warm period, less than one per cent of Antarctica is ice-free, but it was assumed that during the ice ages there was insufficient ice-free land for Antarctic plant and animal species to survive and evolve.
 
However, the scientists report that an exceptional long-term evolutionary persistence, isolation, and a striking capability to survive global climate change, appear to be the ‘norm’ rather than the exception for the terrestrial world.
 
Pete Convey of BAS said: “Because these groups of invertebrates, plants and microbes occupy such a tiny part of a huge continent climate scientists have tended to ignore them.”
 
Recent advances in molecular biology and biogeography has shown that the life on Antarctica’s ice-free land is significant for those wanting to reconstruct a picture of the Earth’s glacial history.
 
“It is important now for us to work together with scientists from all disciplines to integrate this new biological evidence in glaciological and climate models. It will help answer the big global questions about past and future climate change and be a valuable contribution to International Polar Year 2007-2008,” Convey concluded.

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