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.

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.

The discovery of amber in Antarctica has been reported for the first time, as detailed in a recent study published in Antarctic Science. Dr. Johann Klages from the University of Bremen, alongside a team of researchers,

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

A new discovery has closed a significant gap in the global map of amber finds: for the first time, amber has been unearthed in Antarctica. This discovery, led by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) and TU Bergakademie Freiberg,

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,

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