Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Geociencia antártica: situación actual y perspectivas futuras

1997; Royal Spanish Society of Natural History; Volume: 93; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

0583-7510

M.R.A. Thomson,

Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils

With few exceptions, all areas of Antarctica have been explored geologically at a reconnaissance level and the broad geological picture is generally well established. In some areas, geological investigations are even extremely detailed and well advanced, with results that contribute significantly to the understanding of global problems. How-ever, working in Antarctica is expensive and it behoves the scientist to undertake research that is of the best quality and the most relevant that is achievable. Yet, there are still cases of low-quality and repetitive science being carried out in Antarctica. Such activity reflects badly not only on those directly responsible but, because Antarctic science is something of an international activity, it can also reflect poorly on those doing really good science. The international political climate is such that the time has never been better for multinational collaboration in Antarctica, a mechanism for increasing both the level and quality of scientific output, and of sharing the increasing logistic costs. Opportunities for research in the fields of Global Change (especially on geological time-scales), Earth processes, and the evolution of Antarctic marine biotas are briefly reviewed.