No apology is needed for the birth of this journal, but perhaps some explanation is called for in a world of diminishing library budgets. Antarctic science has never been so healthy. The recent marked increase in the number of participating nations has strengthened the range of scientific activities but it is in danger of weakening the routes for the exchange of information. Papers are becoming increasingly dispersed throughout the general literature, minimizing the potential for cross-fertilization between disciplines and making synthesis more difficult. Antarctic science is now not just of national political interest but of global relevance. Major advances in polar science, as in science elsewhere in the world, result increasingly from team efforts in interdisciplinary research with results and conclusions of interest to a wide range of disciplines.

Antarctic research has progressed steadily from the era of reconnaissance studies into a period of problem-oriented scientific investigation. The International Geophysical Year and the intensive work of the 1960s and 1970s have established fundamental knowledge of Antarctic environmental systems on which present and future activities can be planned. Antarctic scientists of all nationalities are now eager to accept and exploit the challenges presented by global change programmes. At its XXth meeting in Hobart in September 1988, SCAR proposed an Antarctic component for inclusion in the ICSU International Geosphere–Biosphere Programme. Antarctic science thus considers itself sufficiently mature to be able to contribute effectively to programmes of world scope. Indeed, involvement in such activities may be seen as mandatory in order to continue to underscore the credibility and mainstream relevance of Antarctic scientific endeavours.

Antarctica is currently the most productive region of the Earth for the recovery of meteorites and over 9800 specimens have been found there, most of these since 1969. This material consists of meteoritic fragments representing a much smaller, but unknown, number of distinct meteorites. The particular climatic and environmental conditions of Antarctica result in the recovery of a much larger fraction of the extraterrestrial material that falls to Earth than would be the case in other regions. Remarkable concentrations of meteorites are found in some ‘blue ice’ areas resulting from the movement and ablation of the ice. Most meteorites are believed to have been derived from asteroids less then 200 km in diameter. The discovery in Antarctica of meteorites of lunar material proved that other sources are possible. Indeed two meteorites from Antarctica may have come from the planet Mars. Antarctic meteorites have much older terrestrial ages than non-Antarctic specimens and may be used to obtain information on the movement of the ice sheets in the past.

Macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus) and rockhopper penguins (E. chrysocome) account for a substantial proportion of the avian biomass at the subantarctic Prince Edward Islands (47°S, 38°E) in summer, when both species are breeding at the islands. Information on breeding population sizes, breeding and moulting activities, and diets were combined with measurements of the penguins' energy expenditures to construct a bioenergetic model of their energy requirements and food consumption at the islands. Total energy requirements of adults and chicks amounted to 460 × 109 kJ and 162 × 109 kJ for macaroni and rockhopper penguins, respectively. Food consumption was estimated to amount to a total of 166 000 tonnes during the seven-month breeding and moulting cycle, of which macaroni penguins consumed 75%. Most, if not all, of this food is taken within a 200-km radius of the islands. Available information suggests that potential primary production in the immediate vicinity of the islands is sufficient to support the macaroni and rockhopper penguin populations. However, the importance in the diets of the penguins of several prey species more typical of Antarctic and subtropical regions suggests that the penguins rely to a large extent on the importation of prey populations from other areas.

Most of the species in the Ectemnorhinin are cryptogam feeders, angiosperm feeders representing a minority. It is hypothesized that this dearth of angiosperm feeders is due to previous climatic conditions, which precluded angiosperm herbivory, but allowed for the exploitation of a diverse cryptogamic flora, and that only with the post-glacial warm-up of the Subantarctic has angiosperm herbivory become possible. When examined in the light of the Quaternary history of the South Indian Ocean Province islands, evidence obtained from a study of the habitat use, diet and morphology of species within the tribe supports this hypothesis.

Field measurements of CO2 exchange were made with an infra-red gas analyser system on lichens at Bailey Peninsula, Wilkes Land, continental Antarctica. It has been demonstrated that Usnea sphacelata, a prominent element of the cryptogamic vegetation of this area, became photosynthetically active at temperatures below 0°C when the thalli were covered by drifted snow. Carbon dioxide uptake was detected down to −10°C. The carbon production during such a ‘frost’ day was considerable for a slow-growing Antarctic lichen. The importance of snow for production in lichens is emphasized. The mechanism of water uptake when the thalli are frozen needs further investigation.

Plant megafossils collected from the previously unexplored English Coast of eastern Ellsworth Land have yielded the first Glossopteris leaves from the Antarctic Peninsula tectonic province. Collecting at Erehwon Nunatak recovered numerous spatulate leaves of consistent morphology, most likely pertaining to one natural species, and described here as Glossopteris erehwonensis sp. nov., as well as fragments of Phyllotheca and Equisetum. The large sample size, the predominance of Glossopteris leaves, the low species diversity, and the lack of characteristic Early Permian (Gangamopteris) and Early Triassic (Dicroidium, Lepidopteris, Pleuromeia) taxa suggest a Permian, probably Late Permian, age for the Erehwon Nunatak beds. These rocks are thus significantly older than any other sedimentary rocks known from Palmer Land and Ellsworth Land. A second flora, collected from Henkle Peak, consists exclusively of the remains of Elatocladus planus, a conifer which probably dominated forests in this area during the Jurassic. The plant megafossils support correlation of the sedimentary rocks with those of the Middle–Late Jurassic Latady Formation of south-eastern Antarctic Peninsula and eastern Ellsworth Land.

The design of a computer-controlled climatic simulation cabinet used for mechanical weathering studies on Antarctic rocks is described. It is argued that if the results of simulations are to be applicable to field situations they should be firmly based on field environmental conditions. Some weathering results from a laboratory simulation based upon microclimatic data collected from the maritime Antarctic are presented and it is shown that they could not have been obtained from field measurements alone. Further simulation studies are required for the Antarctic and it is argued that the nature of Antarctic research is such that it is particularly conducive to this type of approach.

No less than 15–20 sedimentary basins are now known on the Antarctic continental landmass and surrounding continental shelves. Reconstruction of their tectonic and stratigraphic evolution is a specialized task. Owing to the polar position of the continent, the Pacific and Atlantic global geostructures are closely spaced there and the interplay between them is strong enough to result in hybridization of the characteristic tectonic features of the various basins. The present morphostructure of the southern polar region of the Earth is characterized by a prominent circumpolar zoning. Therefore, the sedimentary basins form a gigantic ring along the continental margin, including both the shelf proper and the edge of the continent. Within the ring, the basins are associated with different types of margins successively replacing each other, from the Mesozoic magmatic are in the Pacific segment to the classic passive margin off East Antarctica. The formation of the sedimentary basins in the Antarctic segment of the Pacific mobile belt was a part of a single process of geosynclinal development, whereas on the craton flank the process was superposed on the continental structures by rifting during Gondwana fragmentation. During post-break-up tectonism, continental glaciation played an important part in the formation of the sedimentary basins.

A new fossil teleost, belonging to the family Aspidorhynchidae Nicholson & Lydekker, Aspidorhynchus antarcticus sp. nov., was obtained from a block of reworked Upper Jurassic tuffaceous mudstone in the lower (Albian) part of the mid-Cretaceous Whisky Bay Formation of James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula. Additional material, assignable to Aspidorhynchus sp., was collected from in situ Upper Jurassic marine rocks (Nordenskjöld Formation) at Longing Gap, northern Antarctic Peninsula. Not only is this the first reported occurrence of the family from Antarctica, it is also the first unequivocal record of Aspidorhynchus outside Europe; prior to this discovery, the genus had only been reported with certainty in marine deposits from the Middle Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous of England, France and Germany. This is the earliest neopterygian fish so far recovered from marine rocks in the Antarctic.

Analysis of high-resolution data from slow-ascent radiosondes released at Halley station, Antarctica (75°38′S, 26°40′W), shows that internal gravity wave phenomena are frequently present in the lower troposphere. There is a strong tendency for these waves to induce a vertical transport of the SE-NW component of momentum, this being the component perpendicular to the alignment of regular ridges in the ice shelf on which the base is built and is independent of the mean wind direction. A method for estimating the variation of the momentum fluxes with height is described. Results show that momentum flux divergences equivalent to accelerations of about 10 ms−1 per day are common at Halley.