Lush forests once grew in Antarctic--new published science says (SUV did not exist)

• New science shows earth's orbit lead to global warming.

6/3/09: "Until recently, only a single radar flight some 30 years ago had probed the (key Antarctic Gamburtsev mountains) chain....

• Martin Siegert of the University of Edinburgh, UK, says it is very likely that there are bits of frozen vegetation down there too – far out of reach. "It would have looked much like Patagonia today, with

• quite lush forests and small valley glaciers cutting into the alpine topography," he says....

The radar images suggest that Antarctica "grew" its ice cap in three stages, carving out the rock below in distinct ways

• as glaciers expanded, retracted, and flowed downstream.

The images were collected between 2004 and 2008 by researchers who drove huge trains of caterpillar tractors in tight lines over Dome A, a plateau of ice at the heart of Antarctica. The tractors carried radars that pinged down through the ice...

• Earlier this year, the British Antarctic Survey revealed images of the mountains' profile.

Now, a Chinese, Japanese and UK team have published results detailing the 900-square-kilometre area beneath Dome A....

Some 34 million years ago, small mountain-top glaciers developed. They froze and thawed

• with variations in Earth's orbit,"...

"Journal reference: Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature08024)"

• from New Scientist, 6/3/09, "How Antarctica grew its ice--and lost its hanging gardens," by Catherine Brahic

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