Fly fossil found in Antarctica

Netscape ^ | May 25, 2003

[byteback]

It's just a tiny fossil of a fly that scientists found some 300 miles from the South Pole. But this fossil will help them: --figure out what life was like millions of years ago in ancient Antarctica and --help explain global changes in today's climate. One of the biggest surprises of the discovery: No one even knew there were flies in this frozen land where summer temperatures are a bone-chilling 20 degrees below zero. The fly fossil is from the Cyclorrhapha family, the so-called "higher flies" that include the common housefly, reports CNN.

North Dakota State University geologist Allan Ashworth, who found the fossil and is recognized as a pioneer in using insect fossils to research climate changes, speculates that flies could have existed during a short-lived warm spell in Antarctica several million years ago. They could also have been part of the animal life on a mega-continent called Gondwana that later split up and formed Antarctica, South America, India, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa. Finding such fossils is "painstaking stuff," Ashworth admitted. But the payoff can be huge because so much can be learned from them. CNN reports that the fossil Ashworth found in Antarctica is 5 to 7.5 millimeters long. The fly is actually in the puparium stage, which is similar to the butterfly's cocoon state--a transition period between the larva and adult insect.

So now the big question to be pondered: If a warm spell in Antarctica allowed the fly to live there, what caused the temperatures to rise? Some 15 million years ago, it was not greenhouse gases to blame. So what was it? This ancient clue could help scientists learn more about global warming now. The findings were published in the British journal Nature.

[LiteKeeper]

I'll bet God knows the answer!

[hosepipe]

1(one) Fly......
I don't suppose its possible wind currents swept the fly up to higher zones from somewhere else and deposited it there where it immedialtely froze NAH!... Heck they find spiders way high in the air colunm....regularly.. to be deposited in other CONTINENTS... why not flys...

finding the fly was dumb luck..?
Why not...

[festus]

How do we know the fossil didn't come from mars like that rock they found a year or so back ? Maybe this is proof of extraterrestial life !!!!! ;-) ;-) ;-)

Seriously though the line :

It's just a tiny fossil of a fly that scientists found some 300 miles from the South Pole. But this fossil will help them: --figure out what life was like millions of years ago in ancient Antarctica and --help explain global changes in today's climate

Says it all.

Did anyone ever watch that old game show called liars club ? This is somehow related..........

The only fact will be they found a fly fossil in antartica.

But what will be taught as fact is all manner of extrapolation of personal views and agendas by "scientists" or at least by "scientists that are smart enough to only say the approved truth" the other kind don't count............

Sigh.....

[COBOL2Java]

[ancient_geezer]

Biblically, a better question is "what caused the temperatures in Antarctica to fall?"

Which time?

Global Temperature and Atmospheric CO2 over Geologic Time 

• Late Carboniferous to Early Permian time (315 mya -- 270 mya) is the only time period in the last 600 million years when both atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were as low as they are today (Quaternary Period ).
  Temperature after C.R. Scotese
  CO2 after R.A. Berner, 1994

•     There has historically been much more CO2 in our atmosphere than exists today. For example, during the Jurassic Period (200 mya), average CO2 concentrations were about 900 ppm or about 2.5 times higher than today. The highest concentrations of CO2 during all of the Paleozoic Era occurred during the Ordovician Period, exceeding 6000 ppm -- more than 16 times higher than today.

•     The Carboniferous Period and the Ordovician Period were the only geological periods during the Paleozoic Era when global temperatures were as low as they are today.
  
  To the consternation of global warming proponents, the Late Ordovician Period was also an Ice Age, with CO2 concentrations nearly 15 times higher than today-- 5500 ppm. According to greenhouse theory, Earth should have been exceedingly hot. Instead, global temperatures were no warmer than today. Clearly, other factors besides atmospheric carbon influence earth temperatures and global warming.

 

---

 

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle

 

Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice

[mewzilla]

I can just hear the fly fossil now: Help me, help me!!!

[HalfFull]

Nice chart. Didn't know that million of years ago, "they" had little weather men with their stone tablets recording CO2 and temperature variations.

[ancient_geezer]

It's called ice,(VOSTOK antartica) containing microscopic bubble samples of the atmosphere.

[ancient_geezer]

PS. You might try reading the article on Coal strata as well. Amazing how CO2 content of the atmosphere affects the growth of vegitation, and the depostitation of carbonate deposits in sediments.

As far as temperature, isotope ratios serve as excellent proxies for temperature.

[clamper1797]

Now how can that be after all everyone "knows" that the earth is only 6,000 or so years old (/sarcasm)

[JimRed]

..."what caused the temperatures in Antarctica to fall?"

Global COOLING? From the cigar smoke and the exhaust from the tiny SUV?

[SunkenCiv]

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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