The fifth and final drilling campaign of the Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project has just begun in Antarctica. In the remote Little Dome C camp, at an altitude of 3,200 meters and a temperature of -35°C, an international team of 15 scientists and logistical staff will be engaged in drilling the rock beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and extracting replicas of ice samples taken during the last season, containing information on the climate of the past dating back more than 1.2 million years. The project, led by the National Research Council's Institute of Polar Sciences, is one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in the field of paleoclimatology. - PRESS RELEASE