Palm Trees Thrived in Antarctica

Evidence for tropical trees has been found 5 km deep off the coast of Antarctica.

The BBC News reported that explorers dropped a drill rig 4 km down into the ocean off the east coast of Antarctica, then drilled another kilometer through sediment.  The drill core included pollen grains of palm, and trees resembling baobab and macadamia.  Remnants of single-celled archaea were also found.”The lowland coastal region sported palm trees, while slightly inland, hills were populated with beech trees and conifers,” the article said.

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) dates the sediments as Eocene, 53 million years old in the evolutionary timeline.  The researchers infer from the flora that global temperatures were some 5°C warmer than today.  That would have created no sharp division between the poles and equator. Even in the darkest part of winter, temperatures at the poles probably did not drop below 10°C (50°F).

“The early Eocene was a period of atmospheric CO₂ concentrations higher than the current 390 parts per million (ppm)—reaching at least 600 ppm and possibly far higher,” the article said.   Scientists believe this data can help improve computerized climate models.  Even though the article claimed that “Eocene represents heightened levels of CO₂ that will not be reached any time soon, and may not be reached at all if CO₂ emissions abate,” it ended by arguing that current climate models are making good predictions of future warming.

The BBC News posted an audio clip about the find from one of the IODP members.

Well, isn’t this remarkable.  First of all, what’s the worry about human-caused global warming if it got much warmer in the past when evolutionists say people weren’t around?  Obviously all the land animals and plants survived this episode, including the living fossils that are so delicate they tell us humans are making them go extinct.  And pray tell how they can prove that “Archaea hold on to their structure through millions of years.”

Second, and even more important, evolutionists have no theory for why the earth should have warmed up at that time.  Many Biblical creationists, though, without the millions-of-years timeline, believe that the pre-Flood world sported a moderate climate without a large difference between the poles and equator, just like the data indicate.  The Flood, however, changed all that, burying the antediluvian world beneath miles of sediment – and ushering in a much more recent Ice Age whose effects are still damping out.  Which account is a better match to the data?