You know once upon a time how *most* modern day land was joined together to be just one peice of land mass? It was called Gondwana land.
Anyhow, New Zealand was joined against the east side of Australia (Queensland) and the Antartic peninsula was joined to a place called Slope Point in New Zealand. (Evidence comes from type of rocks on both coasts).
Well the funny thing is, back then, a few million years before things started breaking up, there was a massive forest that ranged across New Zealand, and the Antartica (wasn't ice back then) and Australia. Well, sorry, that wasn't so funny, but here comes the funny thing: The land started to break up and thus, this massive Jurassic forest broke up and went its seperate ways. Well apparently, it took a hell of a long time for the Antartic to get to where it is now (millions of years) and then *10 million years* after Antartica is settled into the place it is today, that damn forest still grew. This is a FACT, they done some radio-carbon testing and other means, by studying the fossilised forest (petrofied wood).

My question is: WTF? How the hell does a forest grow at an area that is the coldest in the world, even back then, with no sun for 3 months of the year?!

I say *most* landmass. When all landmass was actually one vast thing, it was way back in the bacterian times when only bacteria could survive - long before the tri-jurrasic and jurrasic age, which I am actually talking about.

I do have a theory, that trees that loose their leaves in the winter don't grow, and don't need sunlight right? This could have happened to the trees down in Antartica, *however* the type of trees that were growing are ones that *need* sunlight, beech trees and so forth.
I agree with Manbreakfast about the volcanic activity keeping the earth warm - maybe the amount of carbon dioxide in the air kept the trees from exploding from very cold temperatures?? Global Warming anyone?

But 3 months with absolutely _NO_ sunlight just seems strange. If they did adapt, they adapted pretty fast.

And the volcanic thing seems strange too, remember its taken millions of years for all the land to be where it is now, Antartica down there, Australia there and NZ there.
But the Forest still grew for 10 million years AFTER. This is AFTER all the volcanic activity?? I have been finding out more information and it appears this forest was still there until 3 MILLION years ago.

Geography is interesting.