Jun
13
2018
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A Chemical Detective Story: Why is Don Juan Pond So Salty?
During winter, nearly everything in Antarctica freezes solid. Except Don Juan Pond. Though only about twice the area of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and barely a foot deep, Don Juan Pond is famous for being the saltiest body of water on the entire planet. It is saltier even than the Dead Sea.
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May
03
2018
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Paleo Gondwanaland Was Full Of Lystrosaurs
An expedition studying the aftermath of one of Earth's greatest global extinctions collected hundreds of prehistoric animal fossils from the mountains of Antarctica this past season. Ten researchers spent nearly six weeks camped in the Transantarctic Mountains, collecting fossils that formed following the great extinction at the end of the Permian era.
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Jun
30
2017
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The Prehistoric Forests of the Frozen Continent
Paleontologists uncovered the fossil remnants of the oldest forest yet discovered in Antarctica. At about 270 million years old, the fossils come from an extinct species of tree known as Glossopteris. The fossils promise to offer paleontologists insights into the prehistoric climate and ecology of Antarctica, and the dramatic ecological changes that were about to sweep across the continent.
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May
17
2017
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Tag! You're it!
A number of Adelie penguins around the Ross Sea are sporting sophisticated new leg bands this year. Ornithologist David Ainley and his team attached new electronic tags to about 150 penguins to record where each penguin goes and how deeply it dives under water. The tagging project ties in with a broader effort that he's been spearheading for 20 years, monitoring Adelie penguin populations and demographics around Ross Island.
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Apr
26
2017
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Caves Of Gas
Planet Earth is gassy. All over the world, plumes of gasses that formed deep under the planet's surface, pour out of active volcanoes and mix with the atmosphere. Tobias Fischer, a volcanologist at the University of New Mexico, spent two seasons exploring the frozen face of Antarctica's Mount Erebus, the world's southernmost active volcano, to better understand these fumes escaping from the depths of the Earth.
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Mar
14
2017
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Tracking Earth's Past Magnetic Moments
The key to understanding Earth's prehistoric magnetic field lies hidden in the rocks. Specifically, igneous rocks, basalts that cooled from liquid magma spewed out of volcanos. Geologist Lisa Tauxe of the University of California, San Diego, and her team, traveled to Antarctica to collect rock samples that can tell them more about the planet's magnetic field over the past few million years. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program.
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Nov
30
2016
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The Polar Geospatial Center
The icy surface of Antarctica is a dynamic environment; and conditions can change drastically from year to year or even week to week. Because of these endless changes, making a map of the ever-changing ice cover can be like putting together a map of the clouds. The Polar Geospatial Center has been using satellite data to provide invaluable, up-to-date information about surface conditions across the continent for nearly a decade.
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May
25
2016
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Scientists Recover an Abundance of Fossils and Geologic Data from Antarctica
Using everything from pickaxes to helicopters, paleontologists scoured multiple islands off the Antarctic Peninsula in February and March for the remains of prehistoric beasts and returned with a trove of fossils from the end of the time of the dinosaurs.
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Mar
10
2016
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Giving Mount Erebus a CAT Scan
An international collaboration of scientists is using electromagnetic emissions from lightning strikes and solar wind to map the inner workings of Antarctica's Mount Erebus, the world's southernmost active volcano. The research, led by scientists from New Zealand and the United States, will yield the clearest picture yet of the volcano's interior.
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Oct
21
2015
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The Lost Dry Valleys of the Polar Plateau
Today the McMurdo Dry Valleys are a unique geographic feature in Antarctica, lowland regions away from the coast with no ice cover. However, unusual mineral mounds discovered along the Transantarctic Mountains indicates that there may have once been more places like them elsewhere on the continent.
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Oct
08
2015
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The Dry Valleys Helped Scientists Understand a Wet Mars
The recent announcement of evidence of flowing, liquid water just below the Martian surface made headlines across the globe. When asked what this water might be like, NASA scientist Chris McKay pointed to Antarctica's briny Don Juan Pond in the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
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May
11
2015
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Anatomy of a Deglaciation
One way to understand how Antarctica's ice will melt - which glaciers will recede when - is to look at how it happened in the past. Trevor Williams and his team traveled to a remote mountain range to collect rocks to help map out previous deglaciations.
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Apr
13
2015
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Underground Movement
There is an underground movement underway in Antarctica. This particular movement doesn't involve radical political parties or fringe music festivals, though the idea of super salty water moving through the shallow subsurface of the Dry Valleys may eventually shake up established orthodoxy.
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The Dry Valleys' Briny Deep
Researchers Release the Highest Resolution Antarctic Map Ever Produced
