In geological time, a million years is recent history. The proof, which was published last week in Science, comes from a team of scientists from Uppsala University in Sweden and California Institute of Technology who drill deep holes near the edge of the ice sheet. Within samples collected from the solid substances lying beneath the ice. They found fossils of microscopic marine plants which suggest that the region was once an open ocean not solid ice. As Herman Engleheart, a co-author from the California Institute of Technology says, ‘The West Antarctic ice sheet disappeared once and can disappear again.’