evidence: When explorers first started to investigate the rocks of Antarctica they found clues of a warmer past. An expedition in the early 1900s, led by Robert Falcon Scott, collected rock samples of 250-million-year-old fossil leaves as they attempted to be the first people to reach the South Pole. Fossils are ancient remains of life that can be preserved in rocks (Figure 1). Unfortunately, due to the harsh weather, they died trying to return to their boats at the coast. The important rocks with the ancient leaf fossils were found alongside their bodies. Throughout the 1900s, geologists (scientists who study the Earth) discovered more and more plant and animal fossils in rocks and outcrops scattered around the small patches of Antarctica that are not covered in ice. These discoveries showed that plant life once thrived on the continent, but our understanding of how and when the climate changed there did not start to be pieced together until analysis of the seafloor near Antarctica, in the 1970s. [...] Reading the Pages of Antarctica’s Ancient History