The Frozen Garden of Eden: Vertebrate Paleontology in Antarctica

Summary

The Antarctic Peninsula is the only region on the continent which exposes Jurassic to Miocene strata, allowing a keyhole view into the evolution of Antarctic biota and ecosystems. It is the only place to understand the crucial biogeographic role of Antarctica during the faunal turnover at the K/T (K/Pg) mass extinction.

The Antarctic Peninsula is also important as the dispersal corridor between South America and Australia. It is also the place to find more information about Antarctic biodiversity and paleoecology before, during, and after the dramatic Late Eocene cooling.

The goal of this project is to explore Jurassic, Late Cretaceous to Eocene, and Miocene deposits for fossils, with a focus on vertebrates.

During the SWEDARP 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2014/15 expeditions and the GANOVEX IX 2015/16 expedition we collected thousands of vertebrate fossils as well as invertebrates and plants. As a result, the Swedish Museum of Natural History today houses one of the largest collections of Antarctic fossils. There have been several new scientific results based on this material:

• New Antarctic whale fossils give new insights in early whale evolution (Buono et al. 2016).
• The oldest Antarctic terrestrial mammal provides new information on the dispersal history of South American mammals to Antarctica (Gelfo et al. 2015).
• New paleoecological data based on Eocene Antarctic fish diversity patterns, including many new teleost and shark species (Schwarzhans et al. 2016; Engelbrecht et al. 2016).
• New data on penguin palaeobiodiversity and anatomy (Jadwiszczak & Mörs 2016)
• Exceptional soft tissue preservation of Antarctic worm cocoons, including the oldest animal sperm (Bomfleur et al. 2015)

This research is funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR, 2010 – 2015), Riksmusei vänner (2016) and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat

Project Participants at NRM

Thomas Mörs (principal investigator, field work, vertebrates)

Jonas Hagström (field work, invertebrates)

Steve McLoughlin (researcher, clitellates)

Larisa Doguzhaeva (researcher, cephalopods)

Stefan Bengtson (researcher, microfossils, SXRTM)

Veneta Belivanova (researcher, sample processing, Avizo)

Else Marie Friis (researcher, palaeobotany, SXRTM)

External Project Participants

Marcelo Reguero, Museo de La Plata, Argentina

Jürgen Kriwet, University Vienna, Austria

Benjamin Bomfleur, University of Münster, Germany

Piotr Jadwiszczak, University of Bialystok

Javier Gelfo, Museo de La Plata, Argentina

Cathrin Pfaff, University Vienna, Austria

Ari Iglesias, University of Bariloche, Argentina

Carolina Acosta Hospitaleche, Museo de La Plata, Argentina

Francisco Goin, Museo de La Plata, Argentina

Thomas Tütken, University of Mainz, Germany

Urszula Hara, Polish Geological Institute-National Research Institute, Poland