Today, Antarctica is a huge frozen continent, though it was once temperate enough to be covered in swampy forests. Now, a team of scientists has discovered fossilized tree resin—amber—on the continent for the first time.

The amber, excavated from Pine Island Bay in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, provides a unique snapshot of life in prehistoric Antarctica.

Along with fossils of roots, pollen, and spores, the amber provides some of the best evidence yet that a mid-Cretaceous, swampy rainforest existed near the South Pole, and that th