Complementary to measurements in Antarctic ice cores, stomatal frequency analysis of leaves of land plants preserved in peat and lake deposits can provide a proxy record of preindustrial atmospheric CO(2) concentration. CO(2) trends based on leaf remains of Quercus robur (English oak) from the Netherlands support the presence of significant CO(2) variability during the first half of the last mi...

In the Southern Hemisphere long, continuous, and high-resolution series of terrestrial paleoclimatic data are scarce, and they are only slowly emerging. Globally speaking, the most extreme oceanic character is encountered between 40°S and 60°S (Fig. 1). In this latitudinal belt ninety-eight percent of water is juxtaposed to only two percent of land— Patagonia and a few sub-Antarctic islands. Th...

Cyanobacterial mats are commonly found in freshwater ecosystems throughout the polar regions. Most mats are multilayered three-dimensional structures with the filamentous cyanobacteria embedded in a gel-like matrix. Although early descriptions mentioned the presence of larger organisms including metazoans living in the mats, there have been few studies specifically focused on the microbial euka...

Microscopic algae are tougher than you might think. Some can even survive the extreme cold. In this article, we describe one of coolest all, Antarctic green alga called Chlamydomonas sp. UWO241. This one-celled super-organism lives deep in frigid waters a remote and permanently ice-covered lake Antarctica. How does little thrive such barren unwelcoming place? Well, dive into article to learn ho...