Robert sent in the link to https://phys.org/news/2021-03-antarctica-magnetic-link-ancient-neighbors… … researchers have magnetically linked Antarctica to its former status as part of Gondwanaland. The eivdence is derived, in part, from ESAs Swarm satellite mission -as well as aeromagnetic data from geological sources. The idea is to reveal the mysteries beneath the massive and thick Antarctic ice sheet. We may note that Gondwana was composed of South America, Africa, Madagascar, the Antarctic, Australia and New Zealand, as well as India. Gondwana began to break up it is thought in the early Jurassic. This seems to suggest the end of Triassic event had something to do with it – usually studiously ignored. It is also worth noting that these findings would apply equally to an expanding earth theory as they do to plate tectonics.
Robert also sent a link to https://phys.org/news/2021-03-fossil-forests-antarctic-ice.html … fossilised wood and leaves have been found, on and off, in the Antarctic region, for over a hundred years. In fact, fossils are quite common in certain parts of Antarctica, mostly of wood and leaves, and suggesting it was formerly woodland. It is thought that forests extended from Australia through Antarctica to South America.
The research team mostly collected fossilised leaves preserved in fine gravels and sandstones, as well as siltstones [originating in mud]. It is assumed by mainstream the leaves are evidence of trees growing at the South Pole – during six months of darkness. We are told the fossils display evidence of great floral variety, at different points during the dinosaur era, and immediately thereafter. During the Palaeocene, which followed on from the Cretaceous and the K/T boundary event [now the K/P], the woodland resembled in some ways, the woodland of present day Patagonia – which is characterised by southern beech. The mean annual temperature of this forest is 12.5 to 14.5 celsius, with higher levels of rainfall, we are told. Have the poles moved – particularly prior to the K/P boundary, when temperatures were much warmer? It would account for trees growing at the South Pole, and conversely, on Ellesmere Island in the Arctic [close to the North Pole]. The argument revolves around the validity of the plate tectonics theory – and what used to be continental drift [or just plain old expansion of the earth].