Big haul

Paleontologists return from Antarctic expedition with about 200 fossils

Ross MacPhee and his field parties have been blinded by snowstorms, nearly blown off an island by hurricane-force winds, and stymied by pack ice in the pursuit of Cretaceous-age fossils from Antarctica.

Third time’s a charm? Try the fourth.

“We did quite well,” MacPhee said of his most recent expedition to a series of islands off the Antarctic Peninsula where he and fellow paleontologists recovered a couple hundred fossils of marine reptiles, birds, fishes, plants and even a few tantalizing fragments from what appears to be two different dinosaurs.

But the big prize — Cretaceous mammalian fossils that could bolster theories about vertebrate dispersal through the southern hemisphere — still eluded him. Read more

Carnegie Museums’ chief dinosaur hunter leads the charge in a race to reveal the secrets of one of Earth’s last great frontiers.

By Julie Hannon

Departing from southern Chile on a sunny day in February, Matt Lamanna boards a 230-foot research vessel bound for the frozen end of the Earth. Although the distance between the southern tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula (the prong of Antarctica that juts north toward South America) is less than that from Pittsburgh to Chicago, the voyage took four days, the ship inching slowly across the Drake Passage, the roughest stretch of water in the world. Read more