Dec. 19 - The countdown has begun for the geological research of the University of Siena at the South Pole, part of the 13th Italian National Research Program Shipping in Antarctica. From December 27, news, images and curiosities will be broadcast live on http://geoantarctica.wordpress.com, which will be updated by the Italian Mario Zucchelli base and the American McMurdo base at the foot of the Transantarctic Mountains. From these bases, the group will reach the research sites using helicopters equipped with high resolution cameras, able to land on the most inaccessible ridges. The four researchers - Gianluca Cornamusini, Matteo Perotti, Sonia Sandroni and Franco Talarico - will experiment in extreme environmental conditions with a specific software to scan the field (minerals, rocks and fossils) that provides geo-referenced data in text, audio and image format. The research, coordinated by the University of Siena, aims to reconstruct key events of geological history that took place in Antarctica, using the most "recent" landscape modeling, linked to the erosion and transport and accumulation of ice and the lifting of the mountains (of the past 60 million years). These processes formed the rocks, rivers and lakes that today hold abundant fossils of reptiles, fish and forests from the Trias period (about 200 million years ago). The work will also cover the oldest processes of the Transantarctic Mountains, ancient mountain ranges like the Himalayas, created between 550 million years ago and more than 1.7 billion years ago. The conclusion of the expedition is planned for February 5. All results will be disseminated and analyzed, both during and after the expedition, with lectures in Tuscany and Piedmont, and will be the subject of a short educational documentary.

THOSE INVOLVED
The expedition, supported by the Enea Agency for Logistics, is developed according to the objectives of a research project funded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research in 2013. The research project involves: researchers from three Departments of the University of Siena (Physics, Earth and Environment Sciences, the Center for Geotechnology and the National Museum of Antarctica); researchers from the universities of Padua and Roma 3; two research centers of the CNR (Pisa and Milan); and science and geography teachers from two secondary schools (Prato, Pinerolo).