It's hard to comprehend how long life has been on Earth as we're a species with ever-shrinking attention spans. Try to remember that scientists have dug up fragments of DNA dating back a million years.
Fragments of organic material found beneath the floor of the Scotia Sea can be used to map out the history of the area.
The recovered samples are likely to prove useful in the ongoing efforts to understand how climate change will affect Antarctica in the future
Linda Armbrecht is a marine ecologist from the University of Tasmania.
The sedaDNA dating back 400,000 and 650,000 years can be found in caves and subarctic permafrost.
Cold temperatures, low oxygen, and a lack of UV radiation make polar marine environments like the Scotia Sea great locations for sedaDNA to remain intact.
In order to make sure that the age markers embedded in the material were accurate, the recovered DNA was subjected to a comprehensivecontamination control process.
The team discovered a group of organisms that were 600,000 years old. This helps us to understand how this part of the world has changed over the course of time.
The last warm period in the Scotia Sea was over 15000 years ago. There was an increase in marine life activity in the area.
"This is an interesting and important change that is associated with a worldwide and rapid increase in sea levels and massive loss of ice in Antarctica due to natural warming," said Michael Weber from the University of Bonn.
This latest study shows that the sedaDNA techniques can be used to reconstruct the ecology of the ocean over hundreds of thousands of years.
The ancient DNA fragments are being removed from the ground in order to get an authentic look at the past.
Understanding past climate shifts and how the ocean responded means more accurate models and predictions for future events around the South Pole.
"Antarctica is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change on Earth, and studying the past and present responses to environmental change is a matter of urgent importance," wrote the researchers in their paper.
The research has appeared in a journal.
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