Ancient Antarctica

Tristan Hughes (0:00)

Antartica Antartica Antartica Antartica Antartica Antartica Antartica Antartica Antartica Today, it's the frozen, snow-covered southern continent. But for hundreds of millions of years, it was a cradle of life, full of reefs and rivers, of trees and temperate climates. It was the linchpin of the ancient supercontinent known as Gondwana, that millions of years ago connected Antarctica with continents such as South America, Australia, Africa and India. Now, over the past century, paleontologists have uncovered some remarkable fossils from Antarctica, from trilobites and early invertebrates of the Cambrian period to ancient sharks of the Devonian almost 400 million years ago. They've also found evidence of dinosaurs, of early marsupials and so much more.

Welcome to The Ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is the awesome story of Ancient Antarctica. Our guest is Professor John Long. John is a paleontologist and world expert on early sharks and fossil fish, and he has been part of several expeditions to Antarctica over the years, discovering fossils in some of the most extreme locations on earth. This was such a fun chat, and as you're about to hear, John's career, well, he's had quite the adventure.

John welcome back to the show. It's good to see you again, my friend.

John Long (1:46)

It's absolute pleasure, Tristan, I love the show.

Tristan Hughes (1:49)

Well, last year we did The First Sharks and Megalodon.

Once again, we're recording in the morning, my time in the UK. It's evening where you are. I've got a cup of tea. First things first, do you have a beer in hand as well?

John Long (2:01)

Yep, it's beer o'clock here.

Tristan Hughes (2:02)

Beer o'clock, fantastic, tea and beer o'clock. As we delve into this cracking topic, Antarctica, okay, it's not rich in human archaeology and ancient civilizations, but it does have paleontology aplenty.

John Long (2:17)

Absolutely. I mean, it's a massive continent. You've got to think of the size of Antarctica. It's like one and a half times the size of Australia. It's about the same size as the continental United States.

It's mostly ice and rock and snow, but it doesn't have plants and soil. Where the rock sticks up, you get good exposure. It's great for finding fossils where you've got those mountains that stick up above the polar plateau. Just imagine a continent that the average height is 2.7 kilometres above sea level. That's the average height of Antarctica. So yeah, it's got a lot of rich paleontology, a lot of great pickings, a lot of fabulous fossils.

Tristan Hughes (2:59)

And the power of the earth, I mean, you mentioned that some of those places, those rock faces are more than two kilometres high. To get a sense of the power of the earth over millions and millions of years, is it from that high up that sometimes you find marine creatures that were once living beneath the waves?

John Long (3:15)

Yes, the tops of the mountains are just whatever geological strata has been pushed up through the faulting.

Think of Antarctica as the lynchpin of this supercontinent called Gondwana, which was the largest continent of its time, in occupying the south of planet Earth. And you've got Gondwana is made of Antarctica, joined to Australia, joined to India, South America, Africa, all in this one massive area. And Antarctica held it all together until it all started breaking up. So the paleontology of Antarctica is crucial to understand that quintessential origin of various animal groups that migrated from one part of the world to the other. You know, how do you find fossils, for example, in South America, that also care in Australia today? You know, that only Gondwana explains it.

Tristan Hughes (4:07)

Gondwana, well, we'll get more into Gondwana in a bit. But I mean, John, how long ago was it first realized that Antarctica was rich in fossils, that it could be this haven for learning more about prehistoric life?

John Long (4:19)

Well, Tristan, it goes back at least to the 1890s with some of the Norwegian expeditions. Larsen, you know, and the whaling that was happening there. And the whalers and people that went down there would exchange their fossils for tobacco and trade it with the brandy and so on, because they knew fossils were a good currency. People liked them as curiosities.

But the serious collecting of fossils from down there really started with the scientific expeditions of the heroic age. Scott and Shackleton, foremost amongst them. So as we all know, Scott went down there in the Discovery Expedition, 1904, and although they didn't get to the Pole, they did collect some fossils on the way. But then Shackleton, who was on that expedition, ran his own trip back to Antarctica.