Along with fossils of roots, pollen, and spores, the amber provides some of the best evidence yet that a mid-Cretaceous, swampy rainforest existed near the South Pole, and that this prehistoric environment was " dominated by conifers ", similar to forests in New Zealand and Patagonia today.

Today, Antarctica is a huge frozen continent, though it was once temperate enough to be covered in swampy forests. Now, a team of scientists has discovered fossilized tree resin—amber—on the continent for the first time.

This southernmost discovery of amber offers new insights into Cretaceous forests near the South Pole, AWI said in a press release. The amber was discovered in a sediment core retr