Re: Brrr, bone chilling paleopolar summers(Polar dinosaur growth and other

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@umd.edu>]

On Fri, August 12, 2011 8:42 pm, Dora Smith wrote:
> I'll check into that.  It doesn't sound right, however.   There was a
> point
> when all the continents were in one place, and it wasn't both the north
> and
> the south pole.
>
> Dora

You can see a really good set of paleocontinental reconstructions at:

http://cpgeosystems.com/mollglobe.html

And while the exact point in Antarctica which is currently at the South
Pole hasn't always been there, the landmass itself (with other masses
connected to if for most of this time) has occupied a generally southern
polar position for at least 600 million years.

(There have been times, for instance, when rocks currently in southern
Africa rather than Antarctica were at the exact South Pole, but the rocks
of Antarctica were still deep down south of the paleo-tropics.)

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu   Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661

Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843

Mailing Address:        Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                        Department of Geology
                        Building 237, Room 1117
                        University of Maryland
                        College Park, MD 20742 USA