On Wednesday 8 November 2017, the British Council, in partnership with Natural History Museum Rotterdam, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and Codarts, will present the seventh Hoboken Lecture by renowned British palaeoclimatologist Professor Dame Jane Francis DCMG: 'From Greenhouse to Icehouse: history and future of Antarctica’s climate'.
About the Lecture
Although the polar regions are now covered in ice and snow, fossil plants preserved in rocks in Antarctica show that the continent was once covered in lush green forests that flourished in warm humid climates, even though the continent was situated over the South Pole.
Professor Jane Francis studies fossil plants from the Arctic and Antarctica, fossils that contain a rich store of information about past polar environments. She will illustrate her Hoboken Lecture with pictures of Antarctic fossil plants and reconstructions of the forests and landscapes in Antarctica. The fossils show how the climate cooled from tropical warmth about 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs lived in Antarctica, to cold climates with ice sheets 30 million years ago. The last small trees survived on the continent until about 10 million years ago when Icehouse conditions set in and glaciers covered both poles. Now scientists see evidence of warming climates and melting ice sheets in Antarctica. Professor Francis will demonstrate the fossil plants may thus provide us with a window into life at high latitudes in our future warm world.
For more information and tickets to go the Hoboken Lecture website.