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