Contents of water, sulphur, total organic and inorganic carbon, XRF counts of Ti, S and Ca and radiocarbon ages of sediment core Co1008 from Skua Lake, Rauer Group, East Antarctica

The lacustrine record indicates a change from warmer/wetter conditions to cooler/drier conditions after ca. 35 ka. Substantive ice sheet re-advance, however, may not have occurred until much closer to 20 ka. Contemporary coastal areas were still connected to the sea during MIS 3, restricting the possible extent of grounded ice in Prydz Bay on the continental shelf.

In contrast, relative sea levels (RSL) deduced from field evidence indicate an extra ice load averaging several hundred metres thicker ice across the Bay between 45 and 32 ka. Thus, ice must either have been thicker immediately inland (with a steeper ice profile), or there were additional ice domes on the shallow banks of the outer continental shelf. Further work is required to reconcile the differences between empirical evidence of past ice sheet histories, and the history predicted by ice sheet models from far-field temperature and sea level records.