60 million years of glaciation in the Transantarctic Mountains

Abstract

The Antarctic continent reached its current polar location ~83 Ma and became shrouded by ice sheets ~34 Ma, coincident with dramatic global cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. However, it is not known whether the first Antarctic glaciers formed immediately prior to this or were present significantly earlier. Here we show that mountain glaciers were likely present in the Transantarctic Mountains during the Late Palaeocene (~60–56 Ma) and middle Eocene (~48–40 Ma). Temperate (warm-based) glaciers were prevalent during the Late Eocene (~40–34 Ma) and, in reduced numbers, during the Oligocene (~34–23 Ma), before larger, likely cold-based, ice masses (including ice sheets) dominated. Some temperate mountain glaciers were present during the Miocene Climatic Optimum (~15 Ma), before a widespread switch to cold-based glaciation. Our findings highlight the longevity of glaciation in Antarctica and suggest that glaciers were present even during the Early-Cenozoic greenhouse world.

Metadata

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Barr, I.D. Spagnolo, M. Rea, B.R. Bingham, R.G. Oien, R.P. Adamson, K. Ely, J.C. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4007-1500 Mullan, D.J. Pellitero, R. Tomkins, M.D.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Cryospheric science; Palaeoclimate
Dates:	Published: 21 September 2022 Published (online): 21 September 2022 Accepted: 12 September 2022
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Geography (Sheffield)
Funding Information:	Funder Grant number NATURAL ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH COUNCIL NE/R014574/1
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	11 Oct 2022 10:08
Last Modified:	11 Oct 2022 10:08
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1038/s41467-022-33310-z
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:191354

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60 million years of glaciation in the Transantarctic Mountains

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