A chance find of an unstudied Antarctic sediment core has led University of Otago researchers to flip our understanding of how often ice ages occurred in Antarctica.
Lead author Dr Christian Ohneiser, of the Department of Geology, says it turns out they were much more frequent than previously assumed.
“Until this research, it was common knowledge that over the last million years global ice volume, which includes Antarctica’s ice sheets, expanded and retreated every 100,000 years.
“However, this research shows they actually advanced and retreated much more often – every 41,000 years – until at least 400,000 years ago,” he says.
Read more at University of Otago
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