Update 1

We've had a very busy week. Often on field projects, the best findings occur near the end of your stay. That has been the case for us. A few days ago, I decided to sample and wash some of the sediments from a terrace on Lagoon Island that looked like it should have an abandoned colony on it. I had searched for bones there previously, but had found nothing. However, after washing some of the sediments, to our surprise we found lots of small bone and eggshell fragments indicating that this area is, indeed, an abandoned colony.
It might be quite old--the bones are small and very worn, as if they have been ground down slowly through time with frost-heaving (continual freezing and thawing) that causes the soil and pebbles to move (see photo). This process would slowly fragment and grind the bone into these small pieces. In addition, our sample indicated that there is enough bone preserved here to be able to get a radiocarbon date on this site. It was very exciting, but now we had to hurry to complete a dig here before we have to leave.

In addition to this new site, we found two other spots on Lagoon that were once old colonies. So, we spent several long days in the field excavating all of these sites. All occur at different elevations on the island, the highest at about 25 meters above sea level (see photo of Lagoon Island). A date on this site will give a minimum age for when sea level dropped in the past to expose this terrace. In addition, with the sediments from each site we now have a great deal of data to analyze. Overall, it appears that Lagoon Island once supported a large population of Adelie penguins. All of these findings now ensure that we have had a very successful field season.

We will spend our last two days here processing our samples in the lab, packing, and preparing to leave. Our flight to the Falklands is on Feb. 15 and we will begin working our way back to the States from there. It will take about a week of traveling through Chile. This update may be our last, though I will try to send one from Chile.

We will continue analyzing our data when we return to the university lab in Wilmington. Then, I'll be able to tell you more about it directly instead of by email. Meanwhile, it's been a pleasure communicating with you on the Internet about my project and I hope to do this again next year when I visit some new areas in the Antarctic Peninsula. Thank you for your interest and all of your great questions!

Steve Emslie

Questions, Comments
email David Hughes, djh6183@uncwil.edu
Last updated February 29, 2000