Nevada Coropuna, an extinct volcano on the Pacific side of the Peruvian Andes, was one of two mountains topped by ice caps that lured Ohio State University scientists this fall to retreive ice cores containing a record of ancient climate for the region.
This tiny insect, believed to be a midge, was found in the core 64 meters (210 feet) below the surface. Researchers believe that it and several plant fragments found lower in the core were carried to the remote mountaintop by thunderstorms centuries ago and trapped in the ice.
As the margin of the Quelccaya Ice Cap receded over the past year, it revealed a second large plant deposit that had originally been buried by the advancing glacier. At left, the plants with a field notebook (yellow) for scale. At right, a closeup of the plants. Cabon dating places the plant's age at 2,200 years before present.

At left, a map of Peru showing four mountain sites where Thompson and his team have drilled cores through ice caps and glaciers and retrieved records of ancient climate trapped in the ice. Dates from the cores returned during the most recent expedition -- to Coropuna and Quelccaya -- have not been dated but researchers are confident the chronology will extend several thousand years.

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