December 9th

I had to wake in the middle of my night's sleep to attend the craft fair. Tons of amazing artwork, mostly all done by artistans while on the ice. Lots of photography, paintings and jewelry. I think I may have bought more had I not been so sleepy.

Finished off the day with a morning science lecture on the ANDrill project. By drilling deep into the earth and recovering core samples, scientist can say much about what the climate used to look like in the particular area where they are drilling. They used to study when Antarctica's cold years, but nowadays are all looking at points in time when Antarctica was the warmest.

This years core samples showed evidence of swamp land 15-17 million years ago. They learned that rivers used to run in Antarctica (by drilling up the silt that the rivers deposited into the ocean) and when the local volcanos last went crazy (by drilling up volcanic ash). They showed us a picture of a core sample that was layers of deposited silt that had been disturbed by a worm like creature. So what they reckon happened was that the river was running really fast and the poor worm was washed down stream and buried in the silt and then he had to climb his way out.