Today, Antarctica is a huge frozen continent, though it was once temperate enough to be covered in swampy forests. Now, a team of scientists has discovered fossilized tree resin—amber—on the continent for the first time.

Along with fossils of roots, pollen, and spores, the amber provides some of the best evidence yet that a mid-Cretaceous, swampy rainforest existed near the South Pole, and that this prehistoric environment was " dominated by conifers ", similar to forests in New Zealand and Patagonia today.

Modern Antarctica is a frozen desert, largely devoid of life. But this wasn't always the case. Ninety million years ago, it supported lush forests.

For the first time, amber fragments have been recovered from Antarctica, or, to be more specific, from an offshore sedimentary basin. The fossils mean we now have amber samples from every continent, and provide information about Antarctica’s forests ...

The amber, excavated from Pine Island Bay in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, provides a unique snapshot of life in prehistoric Antarctica.

Until recently, a gap existed in the world map of amber discoveries: the Antarctic continent. But that gap has finally been closed, thanks to a team led by Dr. Johann P. Klages from the Alfred Wegener Institute,

This southernmost discovery of amber offers new insights into Cretaceous forests near the South Pole, AWI said in a press release. The amber was discovered in a sediment core retr

Around 90 million years ago, climatic conditions in Antarctica were suitable for resin-producing trees, allowing them to grow and survive.