Sydney - Drilling of the seabed off Antarctica has revealed that rainforest grew on the frozen continent 52 million years ago, scientists said on Thursday, warning it could be ice-free again within decades.

The study of sediment cores drilled from the ocean floor off Antarctica's east coast revealed fossil pollens that had come from a “near-tropical” forest covering the continent in the Eocene period, 34-56 million years ago.



“It's quite surprising, because obviously our image of Antarctica is that it's very cold and full of ice.”



“It's difficult to say, because that's really controlled by people's and governments' actions,” said Welsh, a paleoclimatologist from the University of Queensland. “It really depends on how emissions go in the future.”


“It shows that if we go through periods of higher CO2 in the atmosphere it's very likely that there will be dramatic changes on these very important areas of the globe where ice currently exists,” he said.



The ice on east Antarctica is 3-4 kilometres thick, and is thought to have formed about 34 million years ago.
