A radiocarbon date for penguin colonization of Cape Hallett, Antarctica

Abstract

During maxima of ice advances in the Last Glaciation, 10,000 to 30,000 years ago, the Ross Sea was filled by ice, so penguin colonization of shoreline breeding sites must have occurred since that time. The age of a frozen Adèlie penguin body from the base of an accumulation of penguin bodies and guano at the Cape Hallett rookery has been determined by the radiocarbon method as 1,210 ° 70 years. The rookery was probably colonized between about 400 and 700 A.D., at approximately the same time as a Northern Hemisphere warm period that stimulated a Viking expansion. There is no sign that it was temporarily abandoned at the time of a Northern Hemisphere cold period between 1650 and 1750 A.D.