Source: NZ Herald
It reads like a Hollywood plot – a team crossing crevasse-riddled sea ice to drill 500m for geological evidence that could reveal when the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might collapse, driving sea-level rise and impacting millions worldwide.
Analyses will help to reveal how far the West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated in the past — and what it might do in the future.
Scientists have just got their hands on a 228-metre (748-foot) core sample from the muddy bedrock beneath West Antarctica’s chunky ice sheets. Inside the record-breaking sample, they discovered fossils of marine organisms that date from a time when this area was an open, ice-free ocean.