Spores and pollen from the McMurdo Sound erratics, Antarctica

Antarctic climate, Southern Ocean circulation patterns, and deep water formation during the Eocene

“…Fossil pollen extracted from Site U1356 sediments indicate a changing vegetation assemblage from high diversity plant ecosystems on the Antarctic continent during the early Eocene to a lower diversity, cooler assemblage in the middle Eocene [ Contreras et al , ; Pross et al , ]. Similar terrestrial ecosystem changes have been reported from other sites around East Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and Southern Australia [e.g., Askin , ; Francis et al , ; Martin , ; Truswell and Macphail , ].…”

Eocene sedimentary facies in a volcanogenic succession on King George Island, South Shetland Islands: a record of pre-ice sheet terrestrial environments in West Antarctica

“…Moist, cool tem per ate rain for ests were pres ent, sim i lar to mod ern low to mid-al ti tude Valdivian for ests in South ern Chile (Poole et al, 2001;Fran cis et al, 2009). As sem blages of Nothofagus-podocarpaceous veg e ta tion and other an gio sperms grow in tem per ate cli mate con di tions (Askin, 2000). The presence of Nothofagus spe cies in sed i ments of the Lions Cove Forma tion sug gest a rather cool ing of cli mate.…”

Early to middle Miocene vegetation history of Antarctica supports eccentricity-paced warming intervals during the Antarctic icehouse phase

“…35 Ma illustrate the demise of vegetation on the southernmost continent (e.g., Raine, 1998;Askin and Raine, 2000;Raine and Askin, 2001;Prebble et al, 2006;Warny et al, 2009;Warny and Askin, 2011a,b;Anderson et al, 2011). Vegetation was relatively rich in diversity and abundance prior to the Eocene/Oligocene (E/O) Transition (e.g., Askin, 1992Askin, , 1997Askin, , 2000Truswell and MacPhail, 2009;Anderson et al, 2011), ca. 34 Ma.…”