Source: Otago Daily Times
To the layman, they just look like big tubes of mud. But to University of Otago geology PhD student Natalie-Jane Reid, they show what the world was like up to 1000 years ago.
NB this article is behind a paywall.
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.