Source: ThreeNews / Stuff
It has been called the Antarctic Frontier: an international project testing the very limits of Antarctic research has recovered a record breaking ice core.
After three attempts, the New Zealand co-led international effort to dig 500 metres below the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has managed to recover sediment that's millions of years old.
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.