Reconstructing Antarctica's Prehistoric Past

National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230

Posted July 17, 2018

Image: NSF photo

Nathan Smith, associate curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, holds a three-dimensional model of the brain of a Cryolophosaurus, the first carnivorous dinosaur to be discovered in Antarctica. A cast of the reconstructed skull is on the table in front of him.

Smith joined Brian Atkinson (far right), a post-doctoral fellow at The University of Kansas, who specializes in prehistoric plants, and Deborah Raksany, an IMAX filmmaker, at a July 16 panel at NSF’s Alexandria headquarters to describe the challenges that faced an OPP-supported project at Antarctica’s Shackleton Glacier. The researchers investigated how creatures in Antarctica weathered a global mass extinction around 252 million years ago.

The work was supported by this award: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1341304 / Collaborative Research: Understanding the Evolution of High-latitude Permo-Triassic Paleoenvironments and their Vertebrate Communities