On the flanks of Graphite Peak, Rudolph Serbet uncovers a 250 million- year-old fossilized tree stump. PHOTOGRAPH BY DANNY UHLMANN
National Geographic has a story about multiple new fossil forests which were recently found in Antarctica. Back in the Permian, Antarctica was covered in prehistoric greenery. The team of scientists, which included Erik Gulbranson from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, that discovered these forests were there to look for clues to what caused the Permian Mass Extinction Event.
Antarctica is one of the harshest environments on the planet. As the coldest, driest continent, it harbors a world of extremes. The powerful katabatic winds that rush from the polar plateau down the steep, vertical drops around the continent's coast can stir up turbulent snowstorms lasting days or weeks, and the endlessly barren terrain gives Antarctica the title of the world's largest desert.
Today, polar summers pound the continent with 24 unforgiving hours of light for about half the year, before polar winters plunge it into complete darkness for the other half. Regardless of the season, the temperatures are consistently below freezing, making treks to the landmass unthinkable for the faint of heart.
But Antarctica wasn't always like this. Hundreds of millions of years ago, the continent was smushed together with other modern-day landmasses to form the supercontinent Gondwana. Gondwana was humid and carpeted with a network of hardy plants. As the turbulent climate shifted from hot to cold on a sometimes monthly basis, the streamlined foliage would have needed to withstand extremes.
But then, a massive extinction event pulsed through the land. It catapulted nearly all life to an end, obliterating more than 90 percent of the world's species at the time.
What caused this die-off, called the Permian extinction or the Great Dying, is still shrouded in mystery. Clues to the massacre come to us in the form of fossilized trees, but much of the reasons behind this extinction remain unsolved. And that's why a handful of intrepid scientists traveled to Antarctica this winter, curious to uncover clues about what led to the end of the continent's forested past.