Fifty million years ago, lush rainforests blanketed modern-day Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand and the tip of South America. Now, researchers have discovered new fossils that reveal which plant species populated these forests and how they adapted to life near the South Pole.
Recent excavations in western Tasmania uncovered a number of plant fossils, including the remains of two species of conifer previously unknown to science that were part of a 53 million-year-old "polar forest."
