A 90-Millon-Year-Old Rainforest Has Been Found In West Antarctica

The remains of a 90-million-year-old rainforest have been discovered in West Antarctica. A research paper published in the journal Nature called 'Temperate rainforests near the South Pole during Cretaceous warmth' laid out its findings about the 90-million-year-old rainforest that was found in West Antarctica.

The researchers found that rainforests existed in West Antarctica between 92 and 83 million years ago, those forests were temperate lowland rainforests.

The rainforests that were within West Antarctica during this time were part of the Cretaceous period. The Cretaceous period began on earth around 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years ago. It was an era where dinosaurs roamed the earth and marine reptiles swam in the seas.

The Cretaceous period ended with one of the most infamous events in the world's history: the extinction of the dinosaurs by an asteroid.

One of the theories as to how the extinction of the dinosaurs came to be, drawing the Cretaceous period to an end, was that the earth was hit by an asteroid resulting in the extinction of the dinosaurs and most life at the time. Some life did survive the collision, such as some sea creatures and birds. The end of the Cretaceous period was the earth's fifth mass extinction event. The fifth mass extinction event is also known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event.

Antarctica during the Cretaceous period was a land that was free of ice, full of rainforests and had dinosaurs roaming across it.