Antarctica was lined with trees 15M years ago

An unexpectedly warm period about 15 million years ago temporarily thawed Antarctica, turning the continent green around its edges, a new study says.


Antarctica developed its ice sheets about 34 million years ago. But during the more recent warm period, the interior landscape would've resembled tundra found in parts of modern-day Chile and New Zealand, and the coasts would've been lined with beeches and a type of conifer.

Did most dinosaurs have feathers ?

The fossil of an ancient theropod found in Germany
indicates that feathers were widespread in dinosaurs

Feathers didn’t start with birds. Plumage of various sorts — from simple fuzz to the complex structures used for flight — adorned dinosaurs first, and was only later inherited by birds. And if a beautifully preserved juvenile dinosaur unearthed in the Jurassic strata of Germany is any indication, it is possible that all dinosaurs bore patches of filamentous feathers.

Since the discovery of the fluffy theropodSinosauropteryx in 1996, palaeontologists have recognized more than 30 types of feathered dinosaur. Most of these are coelurosaurs — a disparate group of theropods that includes not only the fearsome tyrannosaurs, sickle-clawed deinonychosaurs and bizarre therizinosaurs, but also birds.