Kerguelen Plateau

[Jason Brougham <jaseb@amnh.org>]

I just learned that the subantarctic Kerguelen Plateau, a submerged 
microcontinent that is over 1 million square kilometers in area (or 3 times the 
area of Japan), has been found to have Cretaceous plant fossils, and was 
probably populated by dinosaurs. Even though our current climate is a glacial 
period, with much lower sea level, the plateau in question is now 1 to 3km 
beneath sea level. Apparently, the original chain of volcanic islands subsided 
and eroded a great deal, leaving just a few small (younger) islands above the 
water today.

Ocean drilling in 1988 returned charcoal, macrofossils, and microfossil spores 
and pollen. There was a forest with a canopy up to 30m, and it included 
podocarps, tree ferns, seed ferns, understory ferns, mosses, liverworts, 
lycopods, sphenophytes, cycads, and rare non - pododcarpaceous conifers and 
angiosperms.

There are strata from the Late Jurassic Tithonian right up through the 
Maastrictian.

So that really is a lost dinosaur Atlantis!

http://www-odp.tamu.edu/publications/120_SR/120TOC.HTM