NWSLUG />"The premiere of "Ice People" in conjunction with Independents Night by the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York on Oct. 16 featured North Dakota State University Professors Allan Ashworth, Adam Lewis, and students Kelly Gorz and Andrew Podoll, in an Antarctic expedition filmed by a documentary crew led by Anne Aghion. The film is featured in "Hollywood in Antarctica" in the Oct. 17, 2008, online issue of The Scientist. The article is found at http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/news.jsp?type=news&o_url=news/display/55097&id=55097.
Emmy Award-winning Aghion spent four months at the U.S. research station McMurdo, and camped out for seven weeks with Dr. Ashworth and his research crew as they studied fossilized vegetation in Antarctic lakebeds. The article in The Scientist by Edyta Zielinska notes that in one scene of the film, Ashworth and Lewis found fossils that show Antarctica once supported a lake ecosystem.
North Dakota State University researchers are among the leaders of a group of National Science Foundation-funded scientists who have discovered the last traces of tundra on the interior of Antarctica before temperatures began a relentless drop millions of years ago. The collaboration's research resulted in a major advance in the understanding of Antarctica's climatic history.
The international team of scientists headed up by NDSU geoscientists Allan Ashworth and Adam Lewis and David Marchant, an earth scientist at Boston University, combined evidence from glacial geology, paleoecology, dating of volcanic ashes and computer modeling, to report a major climate change centered on 14 million years ago. The research team's earlier discovery of lake deposits with perfectly preserved fossils of mosses, diatoms and ostracods generated worldwide scientific interest.
Ashworth, Lewis and NDSU student Spencer Salmon traveled to Antarctica on October 20, 2008, to conduct additional field work. Information about Dr. Ashworth's research is available at www.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/ashworth/. View the "Ice People" film trailer and other information at www.icepeople.com. The movie has premiered at science museums and film festivals in Australia, New York, Jerusalem, Paris, Vancouver and San Francisco. A DVD of the film is available on the Web site.
The research of Ashworth, Lewis and other colleagues has been featured in The Washington Post, The Scientist, GEO magazine and Science magazine. Ashworth continues to serve ex officio on the U.S. National Committee for the International Union for Quaternary Research and has recently been elected to serve a four year term as Vice-President of the International Union of Quaternary Research.
Note: The research of Dr. Allan Ashworth described here is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation's Polar Programs. The film "Ice People" is a co-production of Dry Valleys Productions, ARTE France, ITVS International, in association with Sundance Channel and is produced with a grant from the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program.
For more information:Ice Peoplehttp://www.icepeople.com
The Scientist"Hollywood in Antarctica" http://www.the-scientist.com/templates/trackable/display/news.jsp?type=news&o_url=news/display/55097&id=55097.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Scienceshttp://www.pnas.org/content/105/31/10676
Dr. Allan Ashworth, North Dakota State Universitywww.ndsu.nodak.edu/instruct/ashworth/
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