April 25, 2007 The remarkable new
core was extracted during the recent
Antarctic summer from record-setting drilling depths 4,214 feet below
the sea
floor beneath Antarctica's In fact, a polar
research news feature in the March 2007
edition of the journal Nature called
the sediment core "a frozen time capsule from Earth's icy past." Greenish rock
layered throughout the "time capsule"
indicates periods of open-water conditions, suggesting that the Ross
ice shelf
retreated and advanced perhaps as many as 50 times over the last 5
million
years in response to climate changes, says FSU AMGRF Head Curator
Matthew
Olney. He notes that signs of fluctuations such as these are critical
because
the A collapse there
could raise sea levels worldwide by a
catastrophic 20 feet. Credit for the
core's record-setting extraction goes to the
inaugural expedition of ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) -- a
$30
million multinational project for which FSU is playing the key
curatorial role.
The collaborative research initiative is the most ambitious seafloor
drilling
effort ever undertaken at the Antarctic margins. The National Science
Foundation's Office of Polar Programs largely funds both ANDRILL and
the AMGRF
at FSU. May 1-4, members of
FSU's geology faculty and AMGRF staff
will welcome to campus more than 100 ANDRILL researchers -- scientists,
drillers, students and educators from "The upcoming
ANDRILL workshop at FSU will focus on the
review and completion of an initial report on the first ANDRILL
expedition as
well as giving the scientists an opportunity to re-examine the cores
now safely
stored at the AMGRF," Olney said. The workshop also
will feature a special recognition. At a
reception May 1, FSU Vice President for Research Kirby Kemper will
present a
certificate from NSF and the international "Committee on Antarctic
Geographic Names" to Dennis Cassidy, who served as AMGRF's head curator
from 1962 to 1992, and for whom a mountain in "Needless to say,
this is a high honor for Dennis, and
one that exemplifies the level of service our Antarctic Marine Geology
Research
Facility has provided the global community over the years," said FSU
geology Professor Sherwood W. Wise, Jr., a co-principal investigator at
AMGRF,
a participating (off-ice) scientist for ANDRILL and a member of the
ANDRILL
U.S. advisory committee. FSU's ANDRILL role
kicked off in December when university
staff, undergraduates Charlie King and Kelly Jemison, graduate student
Steve
Petrushack, visiting research associate Davide Persico, AMGRF Head
Curator
Matthew Olney and Assistant Curator Matthew Curren began a three-month
stint on
the curatorial team. Only one member of the team had previously been to
Their curatorial
duties included transporting sediment core
sections seven miles from the drill site to the McMurdo Station
laboratory;
splitting them longitudinally into working and archive halves, then
imaging
each split face; taking samples from the working half for on-ice
scientific
description; and safely packing, logging and transporting them back to
the FSU
research facility. Wise pointed out
that the recent ANDRILL expedition to
Antarctica was the second such project involving AMGRF scientists,
curators,
and students within a six-month period -- the first being the SHALDRIL
("Shallow Drilling") cruise in which FSU took a leadership role.
"It's been a very busy year at our facility, with six FSU participants
on
both projects involved in the science to various degrees while
providing
curatorial support to both," he added. FSU and its ANDRILL
partners already are gearing up for the
next excursion, scheduled for October 2007 during the Antarctic spring.
Still,
the inaugural trip was especially memorable. "So many scientists
and technicians brought together
from around the world for the first time and under taxing conditions
made for a
challenging work environment," Olney said. "Yet, the entire ANDRILL
team did a superb job with one aim in mind: recovering a
record-breaking
geological record that will remain a legacy to the scientific community
for
decades to come." ##
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