Frozen Fossils: A History of Life in Svalbard

Presented by Dr. Aubrey Roberts of the University of Oslo, Norway, April 28, 2022.
There are few places in the world where you can observe large portions of the history of life in a small geographic area. Svalbard, an Arctic archipelago on top of the world, is one of them. The archipelago sports fossils from some of the earliest jawless fish to advanced large reptiles. The near-lack of vegetation makes Svalbard an ideal place to search for fossils, but fieldwork can be rough and sometimes dangerous. Although it may not be home to the writer Philip Pullman’s armoured bears, it is certainly home to the non-armoured kind. In this talk, Dr. Aubrey Roberts presents how the life in and around the island group has changed from 470 million years ago to the present day. From the jawless fish of the Ordovician, to mass extinctions, huge marine reptiles, dinosaur footprints, and tropical forests, Dr. Roberts takes us on a journey through time with these frozen fossils.