The oldest sperm in the world was found in Antarctica. Antarctica before glaciation Global forest area will soon grow

Solutions to Extreme Change

Buddy Davis

The words "dinosaur" and "ice" don't seem to go together at all. Dinosaurs and forests - yes, but not. However, the finding of dinosaur fossils in Antarctica makes us wonder what extreme changes in environmental conditions forced these heat-loving animals to move to the ice-covered continent.

I had the good fortune to search for dinosaur fossils in the Arctic Circle of Alaska. Even during the summer months it can get very cold here. But as unfortunate as I feel sometimes, I can't imagine the difficulties that scientists face when exploring fossils on the opposite side of the world - in Antarctica.

The winds here blow at 322 km/h and the air temperature usually drops to -40°C. By the way, the continent of Antarctica, located at the South Pole, is the coldest corner of the earth.

And yet, some brave souls have ventured to this cold continent in search of fossils, and their findings are truly amazing.

mysterious land

Antarctica is a continent full of mysteries and extremes. This is a real desert, in which precipitation is even less than in the Sahara, and despite this, the depth of ice reaches 4.8 km. People did not know anything about Antarctica until the first ships saw its shores in 1820.

Somehow, the dinosaurs that once roamed the endless forests found themselves in this cold and desolate realm of ice and snow. How could this happen?

Dinosaurs - straight out of the ice

Dress warmly! Dinosaur fossil hunting can only take place at certain times. Our expedition starts in January, the summer month of Antarctica. The place of our search is coastal islands and exposed mountains.

The most difficult to find fossils are located in the mountains unprotected from the wind. They are very difficult to climb, let alone lift heavy stones and bring them down. We use chisels, jackhammers and special saws to extract samples from rock and ice.

So far, the remains of eight species of dinosaurs have been discovered. The first was Antarctica (Antarctica), which means "Antarctic shield". This species was found in 1986 among rocks dating from the Upper Cretaceous. Due to harsh weather conditions, scientists had to go to Antarctica several times to find the remains of this dinosaur.

Antarctica- an ankylosaurus of medium size, about 4 m long. Illustration: Mike Belknap.

Antarctica- it was an ankylosaurus of medium size, whose body length reached about 4 meters. Despite the fact that the skeleton of this species is poorly preserved due to the action of chemicals, we can still see what kind of animal it was. Ankylosaurs were herbivorous creatures whose body was covered with armor plates.

In 1991, a group of researchers discovered the remains of another type of dinosaur in the Jurassic strata. Most of the bones of this specimen were found together, in the form in which they were located during life, and about 2 meters away from the skeleton, the researchers found a petrified tree trunk. Scientists have named this species Cryolophosaurus, which means "cold lizard Cross". This huge creature, approximately 6–8 meters long, must have eaten very large portions of food!

Cryolophosaurus (Cryolophosaurus)- a carnivore about 6–8 meters high. Illustration: Mike Belknap

Members of the same expedition, conducted in 1990-91, also collected partial remains of another Jurassic animal, Glacialisaurus, which means "frozen lizard". The height of the entire dinosaur must have been 6–8 meters, and it must have weighed about 4–6 tons. Scientists have tentatively identified it as a long-necked herbivore or sauropodomorph. And again, it was a dinosaur that ate a lot!

Since the discovery of these finds, several more dinosaur fossils have been discovered, including a hadrosaur tooth (a duck-billed dinosaur) found on Vega Island near the Antarctic Peninsula. Scientists have also identified a huge number of fossils of large reptiles, such as plesiosaurs and mosasaurs.

fern forests

What did all these dinosaurs eat? Trees and bushes do not grow in modern Antarctica, but in layers of sedimentary rocks, along with the remains of dinosaurs, many fossilized spores, pines, lichens, and cycads are found. These plants clearly needed temperatures to survive, far different from those of the area where they are found today.

A study of tree rings shows that the trees grew in a more temperate climate, which differs sharply from the modern climate of the polar regions. For example, the rings of fossil trees were ten times wider than the rings of modern trees of the polar regions, and besides, fossil trees did not have a single “frost ring”.

How did all these fossilized ferns and fossil dinosaurs end up in such a special climate as modern Antarctica?

Glacialisaurus had a height of 6–8 meters and weighed about 4–6 tons. Illustration: Mike Belknap

First steps towards solving the mystery

God gives many clues to help us understand the history of the earth. The Bible is the infallible foundation for understanding everything. From the first chapter of Genesis we know that every "created kind" of land animals, including dinosaurs, was created on the sixth day of Creation week, and the seventh chapter of Genesis tells us that all air-breathing land animals died during the global Flood, with the exception of those who were aboard Noah's Ark. Based on this history and frame of reference, we can begin to correctly interpret the evidence left to us by God in the modern world.

Something Dramatic Undoubtedly Happened to Dinosaurs. Based on the fact that the global Flood represents the most striking event in the history of the Earth, it is from this moment that our study should begin.

Three main questions

I asked geologist Andrew Snelling how dinosaur fossils could have ended up in Antarctica.

Flood deposits?

First, were these dinosaurs buried before, during, or after the Flood?

Well, Antarctic dinosaurs are found in the same Jurassic and Cretaceous sediments as dinosaur fossils on other continents, indicating deposition by the Flood. Everything that was buried in thick, uniform sedimentary layers that stretched across all continents was most likely deposited during the Flood.

Buried on site?

The second question is: if the Antarctic dinosaurs and plants were deposited by the Flood, does this mean that these species originally lived and grew in their burial place, or were they brought here by waters from other regions?

Based on research into how water transports sediment today, it can be assumed that animals and plants were deposited during the Flood close to their habitats. Otherwise, if they were carried too far by the Flood, all trilobites, shells, corals, and other fragile parts would be destroyed by rock fragments and sediments. We would not have been able to discover all those amazing fossils preserved in the sediments deposited by the Flood.

However, numerous data show that during the Flood there were unique processes which we cannot observe today. The waters of the Flood carried the sediments over great distances before they deposited them. Consequently, fossil plants and animals carried by these waters also had to travel long distances before being deposited in these same layers.

Moreover, there is every reason to believe that the water currents moved from east to west. Those. no matter how long large animals floated in the waters of the Flood before being deposited, the dinosaurs ended up being buried at roughly the same latitudes they once inhabited.

Once close to the equator?

According to most creationist geologists, Antarctica has not always been where it is today. It broke away from the supercontinent during the Flood and moved along with other continental parts to its current location.

How do we know this? In addition to the clues that fossils and sedimentary layers give us, magnetism also helps us unravel the mystery of the past. Since this phenomenon operates in different directions in different sedimentary layers in Antarctica, it is possible that the sediments solidified as the continent moved south across different latitudes!

There is strong evidence that Antarctica was part of Australia. For example, some geological elements coincide exactly when you attach one continent to another. However, the ocean floor between these continents does not have these features, indicating their separation.

Modern scientists interpret the data as follows: if these continents were once connected and moved a long distance, Antarctica must have been closer to the equator, even if Australia moved further away.

The mysterious world of Antarctica makes us explore this mysterious continent and the fossils found here even more. The consequences of the global flood and the evidence left by it will help us better understand what the Antarctic world and the dinosaurs inhabiting it were like before and after the Flood.

Buddy Davis is a popular contributor to the Genesis Answers Mission. He travels a lot, conducts many seminars for children and adults, teaching them how to stand up for their faith. He is not only a renowned musician and "paleo artist" but also an intrepid adventurer, having been on expeditions to places like Alaska and Turkey.

Links and notes

In the photo - a sculptural reconstruction of the head of an extinct Antarctic amphibian antarctosuchus ( Antarctosuchus) by Taylor Keillor.

Antarctica is known not only for its endless snow cover, where, it would seem, nothing can be found, but also, oddly enough, for paleontological finds, first discovered on the territory of the southern mainland in 1968. For half a century of studying accessible open mountainous areas in southern Antarctica, paleontologists have managed to collect interesting material that can tell us about what the flora and fauna were like here in the middle of the Triassic period. Among the Antarctic amphibians of the beginning of the Mesozoic, only five species have been described to date, of which the antarctosuchus, which is now classified as a capitosauroid (Capitosauria) temnospondylus, deserves special attention.

For temnospondylic amphibians, see also:
1) Metoposaurus, "Elements", 06/23/2016.
2), "Elements", 08.08.2017.
3), "Elements", 11/10/2017.
4) Neotenic dvinosaurs, "Elements", 01/10/2018.

Anton Ulyakhin

The coasts of the Antarctic continent about 52 million years ago were covered with subtropical forests, and the temperature even during the polar night did not fall below 10 degrees Celsius, German scientists write in an article published in the journal Nature.

The warmest climatic period on Earth over the past 65 million years ago occurred at the beginning of the Eocene epoch, between 55 and 48 million years ago. At that time, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded the modern one by more than two times (more than 1000 parts per million by volume, the current level is about 390). However, until now, scientists had little data on the climatic conditions in the polar regions during this period.

Photo: Rob Dunbar, Stanford University

The scientific vessel JOIDES Resolution, which was used to drill the ocean floor off the coast of Antarctica

A team of scientists from Goethe University and the Center for Climate and Biodiversity in Frankfurt, together with members of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition, studied sediment off the coast of Antarctica's Wilkes Land, collected using the drilling science vessel JOIDES Resolution. The authors of the article studied the spores and pollen of ancient plants found in these deposits, as well as the geochemical composition of the deposits.

"We found that the climate in the lowlands of the coast of Wilkes Land (which was then at 70 degrees south latitude) ensured the existence and growth of very diverse species, almost tropical forests, where palm trees and plants of the mallow family (to which include, in particular, baobabs)," the article says.

At the same time, in the interior of the continent, the climate was much colder in winter, however, even there, the conditions ensured the existence of temperate forests, where, for example, araucaria, now common in New Zealand, grew.

New evidence suggests that climatic differences between the Earth's equatorial and polar regions during the greenhouse epoch about 52 million years ago were substantially smaller than previously thought.

"On its own, the high CO2 content in the atmosphere at that time cannot explain these near-tropical conditions in Antarctica. Another important factor could be heat transfer due to warm currents reaching Antarctica," said one of the authors of the study, Professor Joerg Pross (Joerg Pross) from the Goethe University, quoted by the press service of the university.

In his opinion, the change in ocean circulation and the impact of cold currents led to the disappearance of tropical forests in Antarctica.

1970

At 750 km from the South Pole, near Mount Sirius, the Americans found skeletons and dinosaur prints. This was the first discovery of reptiles in Antarctica.

1990—1991

The expedition of William Hammer, a paleontologist at Augustan College in Illinois, USA, discovered an almost complete skeleton in the Transantarctic Mountains dinosaur - cryolophosaurus.

2005

In addition to an unusual predator in the Transantarctic Mountains, Hammer and colleagues discovered fossilized bones and paw prints tritylodonts - rat-like animal lizards.

2008

Paleontologists discovered in Antarctica burrows of four-legged vertebrate land animals who lived here about 245 million years ago when the region was part of the ancient supercontinent Pangea, the University of Washington said in a statement.

Researchers from this university discovered fossils near the Vala glacier, which were formed when sand from a nearby overflowing river filled the lair and froze in a shape that repeats all the internal voids of the holes. The largest surviving piece is about 35 centimeters long, 15 centimeters wide and eight centimeters deep.

2008

Ancestors of modern moles dug holes in Antarctica 245 million years ago. Paleontologists have unearthed burrows, which even left traces of their clawed paws. It is possible that these animals survived the Permian-Triassic catastrophe in their burrows, which destroyed most of life on Earth 250 million years ago.

2011

12 meters titanosaur, which lived on all continents of the Earth in the late Cretaceous period, was discovered in the deposits of this geological era on James Ross Island off the coast of Antarctica by a group of scientists led by Ignacio Serda from the National University of Comaue in Buenos Aires (Argentina).Scientists have found another proof that the remains of plants and fossils lurk under three kilometers of ice in Antarctica. This is indicated by the island of James Ross, where you can sometimes see the land on which there is no snow. Excavations can be carried out there, and in 2011, scientists managed to do this. Argentine researchers were able to excavate part of the spine of a titanosaur. As has been known for a long time, this creature was thermophilic, it fed exclusively on grasses and branches. The forty-meter giant simply would not have survived in cold conditions. Thus, it becomes clear that millions of years ago, Antarctica looked like the Alps, just as Suzuki's homeland, Japan, sometimes looks like them. at 2.4 kilometers. It is likely that due to strong tectonic shifts, Antarctica broke away from South America, after which the temperature dropped dramatically. The reason for this could be the circumpolar Antarctic current.

2012

Penguin, which was taller than any average person, walked the lands of the southern hemisphere many millions of years ago, scientists have found. Argentine experts have discovered the fossilized remains of a 2-meter bird that lived in Antarctica for about 34 million years. Earlier this year, another find was reported - a 1.5-meter penguin that lived here for 27 million years, but it seems that its ancestors were much larger.

2014

Paleontologists of the Czech Geological Survey found the skeleton of a large plesiosaur. Excavations on the southernmost continent of the globe also brought many other interesting finds.

2014

Near the base of Marambio, the Argentines found the remains false-toothed bird - albatross with a wingspan of 6 meters.

2016

An international team of scientists on an expedition to Antarctica has discovered over a ton of dinosaur fossils, ABC News reports. Among the found fossils, whose age was estimated at 71 million years, there were many remains of marine reptiles. "We found many remains pleosaurs and mosasaurs"This type of sea lizard has become more famous since the recent film Jurassic World," said Dr Steve Salisbury of the University of Queensland. "All the fossils we found were in shallow sea cliffs, so all the inhabitants we found lived in the ocean." The scientists also found bird fossils, including ducks who lived at the end of the Cretaceous period. A team of 12 scientists from the US, Australia and South Africa traveled to the James Ross Island area as part of their Antarctic dinosaur research. The attention of scientists was riveted to the Antarctic Peninsula, the rocks of which, as noted, are the same age as dinosaurs. The found fossils are now in Chile, later they will be sent to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in the United States, where further study will be carried out. It could take up to two years of work to get the first results, Salisbury said.

2016

Paleontologists have published data obtained during excavations in extreme conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula (part of the mainland Antarctica). The remains were found an ancient bird from the order Anseriformes - Vegavis iaai . Computed tomography of the find showed that her lower larynx was preserved. With the help of this organ, modern birds sing and make other sounds. The found lower larynx is the most ancient at the moment. Its age is approximately 66 million years (this is the end of the Mesozoic period). The corresponding study was published in the journal Nature.Among other fossils, scientists have found the head and neck of Vegavis, a large prehistoric bird close to the modern Duck family.

2017

Paleontologists have found the remains of a giant herbivore in Argentina dinosaur - titanosaurus. The size of this lizard - six meters in height, 35 meters in length and 61 tons of weight - makes it one of the largest land animals in the history of the Earth, according to an article published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. "If you put a Patagotitan and tyrannosaurus rex, the latter would have looked like a real dwarf.I don't think these dinosaurs inspired any horror in other creatures of that time.They were most likely very slow and unhurried animals, for which the very act of walking and escaping from predators was an extremely difficult task ", - says Diego Paul (Diego Pol) from the Paleontological Museum of Egidio Ferulho in Trelew (Argentina). There is a version that titanosaurs lived in Antarctica.

2019

Decades later, an international team of researchers on a small Antarctic island found the fossilized remains of the heaviest elasmosaur known to science, an ancient marine reptile. The discovery is reported by National Geographic. The researchers found the remains of a representative of the species Elasmosaurus, which was part of the plesiosaur family. They were one of the largest sea creatures of the Cretaceous period that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. Excavations were carried out for many years, sometimes scientists did not return to them for years due to severe weather conditions. The work was completed in 2017, after which it took time to identify and describe the animal. Scientists have found most of the skeleton, but without the skull. The as-yet-unnamed Elasmosaurus weighed between 11.8 and 14.8 tons, the researchers said. The length of his body - from head to tail - was almost 12 meters. To date, this is the heaviest creature of all discovered. Previously, researchers were able to find representatives of elasmosaurus weighing about five tons and representatives of the genus Aristonectes, whose mass was up to 11 tons. Scientists are still wary of claiming that the discovered animal belongs to the genus Aristonectes. It is possible that this is a representative of a previously unknown genus. According to experts, the discovered creature lived about 30 thousand years before the mass extinction of dinosaurs.

Read more: Dinosaurs: The Evolution of Life on Earth

Land of the Tetanures

Paleontological discoveries of recent years make us look at the past of Antarctica in a new way, clarify and even significantly revise some of the established ideas. The most interesting ideas relate to the events of the Mesozoic era, when the uniqueness of the Antarctic fauna manifested itself most clearly. The dense coniferous forests of this continent were the ancestral home of unusual pangolins and birds and a haven for dying groups of animals. Later, just before the glaciation, along Antarctica, as if on a bridge, marsupials moved to Australia. But even in the ice shell, this land continued to give birth to new species.

In 1990-1991, an expedition by William Hammer, a paleontologist at Augustana College in Illinois, USA, discovered an almost complete dinosaur skeleton in the Transantarctic Mountains. So no one has had any luck yet. Fossilized bones were found in Antarctica before, but only separate fragments, by which it was impossible to determine the genus or species of the ancient lizard. However, removing the skeleton from the frozen rock was not an easy task - it took several seasons. Paleontologists set up camp on the Beardmore Glacier, closer to the find. When the wind subsided and the 20-degree frost became somehow bearable, the team climbed Mount Kirkpatrick, to a height of 4,000 m above sea level. The skeleton of a dinosaur, walled up in light sandstone and mudstone, on any other continent, scientists would carefully remove bone after bone, cutting them out with a pick and a chisel. But polar conditions did not give such an opportunity. Jackhammers and dynamite went into action. A powerful explosion crushed the rock, and pieces of rock, along with bones, scattered around.

Homeland of lizards and birds

But all the difficulties paid off in full. It turned out that the dinosaur from Kirkpatrick is unique, the likes of which have not been found anywhere before. Sharp, inwardly curved teeth betrayed a predator in it, but the unusual features of the structure made it difficult to accurately identify. A large bipedal animal, 6 m long and weighing more than 500 kg, lived in the early Jurassic period, about 190 million years ago, among the Antarctic forests, along with other carnivorous dinosaurs, prosauropods, animal lizards and flying rhamphorhynchus. On his head was a bone crest, not extended along the skull, as in the Monolophosaurus or Dilophosaurus (which wore two crests), but across. This non-standard detail was the reason for the name. The newcomer was dubbed Cryolophosaurus, which means "ice lizard with a crest."

William Hammer began looking for Cryolophosaurus relatives on other continents. A similar structure was possessed by the Pyatnitskisaurus, which lived in the middle Jurassic in South America, the Late Jurassic Allosaurus from North America, and the Yanchuanosaurus found in China. All of them are large predators from the group of tetanurs that prevailed among carnivores. Since the structure of the cryolophosaurus shows primitive features characteristic of tetanurs, the scientist suggested that one of the ancestors of this branch of lizards that arose in Antarctica ended up in his hands. It was from there that the tetanurs spread across the planet. The skeleton of Cryolophosaurus also contains a number of features that make it related to other predators - bipedal and horned ceratosaurus. It is possible that both groups of carnivores descended from common ancestors who lived in Antarctica in the Triassic period, but there is no direct confirmation of this hypothesis yet.

Mesozoic - the time of the appearance of birds - animals similar in structure to reptiles. The details of their evolution are still unclear, and scientists have high hopes for Antarctica. As it turned out, at least one feathered family comes from there. Julia Clark of the University of North Carolina studied the fossilized remains of a large duck-like bird found on Vega Island. According to the researcher, vegavis, as the species was called, lived side by side with dinosaurs and may have survived their mass extinction, which began 65 million years ago. It turns out that he is the ancestor of the duck family, which occupies an important place in the early evolution of birds.

Aleksey Pakhnevich, Candidate of Biological Sciences