Hunting for dinosaurs in Antarctica

Fieldwork in Antarctica was both a challenge and a privilege - and hopefully we'll answer some questions about life near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs

Heroes of Antarctic exploration-past famously include Shackleton, Scott, and Amundsen who raced to the South Pole in search of fame and discovery. They encountered harsh conditions and suffered extreme hardships, cut off from communication with the outside world. It took years of planning, then years of recovery, for these explorers to even begin to understand what they went through - let alone to describe what they discovered.

Over one hundred years later, filled with probably just as much excitement and anticipation, a new group of explorers has again journeyed to Antarctica. After years of planning, the Antarctic Peninsula Paleontology Project, or AP3, an international team of scientists, of which I am a part, headed off to probe a new frontier of Antarctic exploration. Our mission was not to discover the South Pole, but to find evidence of ancient life on a continent largely void of anything alive today. Would we really get there? Could I carry my own weight? Was my mom justified in worrying like I was her six-year-old daughter, not a 36-year-old professional paleontologist? These questions, among others ran through my mind, as I got ready to join 11 other paleontologists for this extreme fieldwork experience.