Antarctica had a warmer past.

Remains of a 260,000,000-year-old forest of deciduous trees have been found in a region of Antarctica 400 miles from the South Pole. The discovery of fossilized stumps of Glossopteris, a seed fern now extinct, supports the view that during the Permian period - years 250-280,000,000 ago - Antarctica had a climate much warmer than it does today, according to Edith Taylor, a research scientist with Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center.

Deciduous trees - trees that lose their leaves yearly - grow in temperate climes. The remains Taylor studied, found on a ridge of Mt. Achernar in the central Transantarctic Mountains, are at about 82 degrees south latitude. No forest ever has been found that far from the equator before. During the Permian period, the site probably was located at 80-85 degrees south latitude.

The discovery of such trees, instead of the short, shrubby conifers one might have expected to find, is further biological evidence to refute the claim some climatologists have offered that the South Pole was frigid during the Permian period. "Some climate models for this region have suggested that winter temperatures averaged -30 to 40 [degrees] Celsius and summer temperatures hovered around zero." In contrast, Taylor maintains that the climate of the Permian was quite favorable to the growth of deciduous trees.

A research team brought back several stump samples to...