It isn't the first time
As many know, Antarctica was once a green and highly productive continent until the middle Eocene, when the first glaciers started to appear.
Ice sheets slowly raised in volume, reaching their maximum size during the Late Pleistocene. Only now, in the Holocene, Antarctica has started to melt again the northernmost coasts, in favor of a harsh, but still more liveable, tundra.
However it isn't the first time: the Eemian, an interglacial period that began 130.000 years ago and lasted about 20.000 years, is known as the hottest period of the entire Late Pleistocene: global temperatures were 2 C° higher than the pre-industrial epoch and 1°C higher than today.
It is believed that large parts of West Antarctica had drastically reduced the overall ice sheet cover: this reduction had probably caused the expansion of a temporary tundra, dominated by mosses, lichens and few flowering plants, like the modern Antarctic grass and the Antarctic pearlwort.
A question arises: could this short-lived habitat have hosted some sort of large organisms?
The answer came in 2028, when a paleontology crew discovered some fossilized parts of a bird and even a partially mummified wing under the melting ice of Snow Island, in the Antarctic Peninsula.
Initially described as an incertae sedis Anseriformes, in the next 3 years the very fragmented material was analyzed genetically, showing not only that these fossils were actually anatids, but they were from two different species: a duck and a goose.
Duck remains were genetically indistinguishable from the modern-day Anas georgica, the yellow-billed pintail, while the goose fossils (and its mummified wing) have shown similarities, but also a marked divergence, from the upland goose. Ironically, these actual species are also the most probable ancestors of the main three anatid clades of future Antarctica: ducktails, rostrids and wedducks.
The goose taxonomical condition is still debated: some lumpers prefer to list this bird as a subspecies (Chloephaga picta eemiana), while splitters suggest the creation of a new species, the Eemian goose (Chloephaga eemiana).
While Anas georgica fossils have shown good flying capacities, suggesting a seasonal presence in the Antarctic territory, the eemian goose wing humerus was 20% shorter than its modern relatives: this goose was probably a poor flier and a resident bird that spent winter days in the Antarctic Peninsula.
In a few thousands of years, these two birds were able to conquer Antarctica, although marginally, feeding on the few grasses, algae and arthropods that could be found on the ground and in meltwater rivers. Both species were probably wiped out at the end of the eemian period, when another glacial stage started again, destroying what life was able to construct in such a small amount of time.
As always, history repeats itself: first as a tragedy, second as a bizarre, exaggerated, yet sublime, opera.