A large New Zealand-led team of researchers, engineers and drillers is hopefully just weeks away from starting drilling on an ambitious project to retrieve a deep sediment core from a remote area of Antarctica.
A large New Zealand-led team of researchers, engineers and drillers is hopefully just weeks away from starting drilling on an ambitious project to retrieve a deep sediment core from a remote area of Antarctica.
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.