Posted on 05/18/2024 8:10:49 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s difficult to comprehend within our limited, double-digit life spans, but Earth is a dynamic planet that is constantly changing. The continents have crashed together and separated a handful of times now (Pangaea is the latest supercontinent, but not the only one), and the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, and orbit are all temporary and movable.
Take, for instance, Antarctica, arguably the most inhospitable place on the planet. Not long ago (geologically speaking), the icy continent wasn’t frozen at all. In fact, it was filled with temperate rainforests teeming with life.
Some 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period — the tail end of the age of dinosaurs — Antarctica was home to a completely different habitat, known as the “Cretaceous hothouse.” The Earth was much warmer due to increased carbon dioxide levels (sea-surface temperatures in the tropics were at an incredible 95 degrees Fahrenheit, for example), and the world’s oceans were a staggering 558 feet higher than they are today. Estimates suggest that Cretaceous Antarctica had a climate similar to today’s Italian peninsula and was filled with plant and animal life, including dinosaurs.
The southern continent’s hospitality didn’t end with the dinosaurs, either; it continued on into the Eocene Epoch around 56 million to 34 million years ago.
It was then that marsupials likely migrated across Antarctica from South America into modern-day Australia before the continents separated. So while Antarctica is pretty inhospitable to humans now, it may just be a phase.
Earth wouldn’t be much without water. When you see our home from space, the entire planet seems filled with the stuff — from vast oceans to continent-spanning weather systems. But there is one place where precipitation holds no sway, and that’s Antarctica’s McMurdo Dry Valleys.
According to scientists’ best estimates, these valleys haven’t seen rain in nearly 2 million years. The area is so parched thanks to a phenomenon called katabatic wind, also known as downslope wind, in which gravity pulls cold, moisture-filled mountain winds down and away from these valleys — blowing away all the precipitation with it.
The lack of moisture and extremely low temperatures in the Dry Valleys make the place a near-perfect analog for the Martian surface, and scientists use experiments in the region to help them understand how extremely cold, dry environments work.
Average thickness (in miles) of the Antarctic ice today
Number of people who overwinter at the world’s most remote Antarctic research station
Estimated years since Australia fully separated from Antarctica
Year Emilio Marcos Palma became the first person born on the continent of Antarctica
Was it part of Pangaea 65 million years ago?
“ the tail end of the age of dinosaurs”
Clearly global warming from dinosaur farts
Not new. I saw pics of palm trees under the ice decades ago.
That just simply can't be true, the globull warmunists assure us that the earth has been in a steady state until man discovered fossil fuels and began the industrial revolution. We're knocking it off its delicate knife edged balance and we'll soon be facing oblivion. Just ask them.
Antarctica has that rainforest 90 million years ago, but then, the dinosaurs started driving their big gas-guzzling SUVs, and all went kaput when the climate went to hell. They changed Earth’s climate permanently.
I'd like to see the data that supports those claims.
Exactly. We know CO2 doesn’t cause ‘warming’. It’s a lagging indicator of warming. Correlation, not cause.
I am not sure about the temperatures but during the Cretaceous, there were no ice caps and an inland ocean extended from Texas up to Canada. Lots of chalk deposits and such. Rivers flowed east into it from the ancestral Rockies. Many of these sands from the rivers and their deltas produce oil and gas now.
I don’t believe the timeline, but pinkos and other climate hysterics will tell you, “Yeah, but it’s changing faster now!” Like they know.
We are absolutely in a cooler than average for the planet phase now.
CO2 vs Temperature:
Global Temperature Trends From 2500BC to 2040AD:
I think I understand that Antarctica 90,000 years ago was closer to the equator than to the poles.
No, Pangaea broke apart about 200 million years ago.
The big lizards caused it!
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By that time, Pangaea had long since broken up / ceased to exist.
Pangaea or Pangea (/pænˈdʒiː.ə/) was a supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic eras. It assembled from the earlier continental units of Gondwana, Euramerica and Siberia during the Carboniferous approximately 335 million years ago, and began to break apart about 200 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic and beginning of the Jurassic.
-Wikipedia
Regards,
I think that you are off by a factor of one thousand.
A mere 90,000 years is the blink of an eye in geological time.
Regards,
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