This month has seen the publication of two projects from the ANTSIE team. First, Claire Penny’s first PhD paper assesses and applies several geochemical methods to a deposit spanning around the last 2000 years of climate history. Her deposit is one of our southernmost samples, and Claire presents the first results from deep in the southeastern Weddell Sea. Claire showed that extensive summer sea ice around 1300-1200 years ago saw the snow petrels using open waters (polynyas) close to shore for foraging. After 1200 years ago a further sea ice advance reduced access to these open waters and limited snow petrel nesting at the Theron Mountains.
Second, in collaboration with dating experts Rachel Smedley and David Small, we explored the potential for luminescence dating of rocks within deposits to provide an independent method of age control. This could be important for deposits where radiocarbon analysis is difficult or uncertain.
Publication details:
Penny CE, Bentley M, Hodgson DA, Gröcke DR, Graham A, McClymont EL. Reconstructing late Holocene summer sea-ice variability in the eastern Weddell Sea. Antarctic Science. Published online 2026:1-13. doi:10.1017/S0954102026100662
Smedley R, Small D, McClymont EL, Bentley MJ, Hodgson DA, Graham A. Novel rock luminescence dating of snow petrel stomach-oil deposits from East Antarctica. Quaternary Geochronology 94, doi:10.1016/j.quageo.2026.101746