" These findings contradict the entrenched view that Antarctica has been stable for at least 15 million years with only minor fluctuations. On the contrary, the change has been dramatic." In San Diego last week, Webb told a meeting of the Scientific Committeee on Antarctic research (SCAR), an organization of specialists from 18 countries which coordinates Antarctic research, that last December his group found a large concentration of fossilized wood and plants in a cliff only 5deg from the South Pole. Peter Webb says that area was once forest..... Webs group has identified conifers with root systems, and various low growing plants. The group also found pollens and spores....The wood is not driftwood, say the scientists from Ohio, because the roots would have been destroyed by drifting....This would explain why the wood is at such a high altitude, of 1800 meters.
The problem is that Antarctica does not have a history of seismic activity necessary for rapid mountain building. The mountains would have had to rise about 1000 meters per million years--a very rapid rate for Antarctica---for the explanation to be correct..... The dolphin is a new family,genus, and species yet to be named dated about 4 million years old by a new method racemisation which dates the proteins by their changes after death. It is the only known verterbrate fossil found in Antarctica less than 35 million years old."