ABSTRACT
The major discoveries from the study of ice cores are presented. This starts with the initial discoveries made from the early ice core work from the 1950’s and 1960’s, which concluded that the ice could be dated, and the contents of the trapped gases could yield information about conditions on Earth hundreds to thousands of years into the past. The ice cores also allowed dating of major volcanic eruptions, and identified that dust was mainly deposited in the ice during cool dry periods. By the 1980’s and 1990’s, microbes were being found in the ice cores, including living microbes in ice that was thousands of years old. By the 2000’s, viable microbes were found in ice that was millions of years old. The numbers of microbes being identified, and the diversity of the microbes reported increased exponentially.
