Bulgarian Researchers Discover Five New Plant Fossils on Antarctica

After the two-month biological research as part of the National Polar Research Programme has concluded, research continues in the remaining two months of the Antarctic summer in the field of earth sciences, said Prof. Hristo Pimpirev, Director of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute and leader of the 27th Antarctic expedition, reports Focus News Agency. 

After the one-week field camp at Hannah Point, Livingston Island, geologists Dr. Stefan Velev and Dr. Kamen Bonev and their colleagues Brazilian Dr. Cristine Trevisan, Chilean Antarctic Institute, and Prof. Şafak Altunkaynak, Istanbul Technical University, discovered five fossilised floral remains, new for Antarctica. They are about 90 million years old, the beginning of the Cretaceous, when the now icy continent was covered with subtropical forests and dinosaurs were dominant. They migrated from Patagonia to the Antarctic peninsula through a temporary island bridge in the place of the Drake Passage. Through the same bridge some plant species that first appeared in Antarctica arrived in South America. At the end of the Mesozoic, Antarctica was a green continent full of life.
The research by Bulgarian geologists and their colleagues helps solve global scientific problems such as the link of the southernmost continent to Patagonia and the migration of plant and animal species at the end of the Mesozoic, the warmest period in the whole Phanerozoic.