The Frozen Garden of Eden: Vertebrate Paleontology in Antarctica

Summary

The Antarctic continent exposes Permian to Miocene strata, allowing a keyhole view into the evolution of Antarctic biota and ecosystems. It is an important place to understand the crucial biogeographic 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 Triassic, Jurassic and Late Cretaceous to Eocene 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 and 2018/2919 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, Loch et al. 2019).
• 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, 2017).
• New data on penguin palaeobiodiversity and anatomy (Jadwiszczak & Mörs 2016, 2019)
• 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), Ymer-80 (2017-2019) and the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat

Project Participants at the Museum

Thomas Mörs (principal investigator, field work, fossil vertebrates)

Jonas Hagström (field work, fossil invertebrates)

Stefan Bengtson (microfossils, SXRTM)

Stephen McLoughlin (fossil clitellates)

Daniela Kalthoff (tooth enamel microstructure)

External Project Participants

Division Paleontologia de Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, Argentina

Department of Paleontology, University Vienna, Austria

Palaeobotany Research Group, Institut für Geologie und Paläontologie, University of Münster, Germany

Institute of Biology, University of Bialystok

Polish Geological Institute-National Research Institute, Poland 

Bundesanstalt für Geowissenschaften und Rohstoffe, Hannover, Germany

Subdepartment of Evolution and Development, Department of Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Sweden

Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Ambiente e Vita, University of Genova, Italy

Sir John Walsh Research Institute, Faculty of Dentistry, University of Otago, New Zealand

Instituto Patagónico de Geología y Paleontología, Puerto Madryn, Argentina

JURASSICA Museum, Porrentruy, Switzerland