Blog & News
Latest insights into our latest mission to the Arctic.
Canada’s Arctic ice shelves have almost halved in size over the last six years.
Summer 2011 marks the second lowest sea ice extent on record
Scott’s Terra Nova
January 17, 2012
Today is the centenary of Capt. Scott’s arrival at the South Pole. It is easy to forget that Scott’s Terra Nova expedition was largely a scientific expedition.
Of course, a Norwegian team led by Roald Amundsen reached the pole first. And Scott and his team never returned home, dying of starvation and exposure on the return journey. Alongside their bodies, however, were several pounds of their precious geological samples and scientific notebooks which, even while approaching death through exhaustion, Scott and his men continued to take with them.
Those samples and data are an enduring legacy of the Terra Nova expedition.
The expedition was the ambitious scientific endeavour of its time, and it was the largest ever research mission to the pole – comprising 12 scientists including two biologists, three geologists and a meteorologist.
The team collected specimens from 2,109 different animals. Of these, 401 were new to science. They also collected rock samples, penguin eggs and plant fossils.
One of the most important discoveries was a fossilised fern-like plant which was known to grow in India, Africa, New Zealand and Australia. It suggested that the climate 250 million years ago had been mild enough for trees to grow.
More intriguingly, the discovery, along with other evidence gathered by Scott’s team, was a hint that India, Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Antarctica had in the distant past all been part of one “supercontinent”. Researchers now call this landmass Gondwanaland.
It was around this time that the idea of continental drift was first put forward, independently, by the German scientist, Alfred Wegener. Scott’s team also collected the first thorough set of weather data for the Antarctic, which has served as a baseline to track changes in weather patterns ever since.
The team also travelled for three weeks to study an Emperor penguin colony come on to land and lay their eggs. The team took some of the eggs – which contained embryos – believing that they would shed more light on a possible link between birds and dinosaurs.
In the end, the eggs were of little use in this regard, but the efforts the men went to and the risks they took under the most extreme circumstances epitomise a spirit of heroic scientific investigation that arguably has not been matched since.
Posted in Blog
POPULAR POSTS
- Behind The Scenes
June 13, 2011 - Ceri’s Copepods
April 7, 2011 - 4 Day Storm at Ice Base
April 4, 2011 - CNN make it to Catlin Ice Base
March 29, 2011
