1. Introduction

Investigating the dynamic behaviour of Earth’s climate system remains a significant challenge. It is partly motivated by our limited knowledge of how the system will evolve in the future and the resilience of ice sheets to perturbations. Throughout geological history, the Earth has been subjected to extreme climatic transitions. These have taken place over various spatial and temporal scales ranging from localised decadal oscillations through to millennial- and multi-millennial-scale processes affecting the whole planet. The focus of this study lies within the latter kind, wherein the Earth flips between icehouse and greenhouse states. During the Permo-Carboniferous, when the Gondwanan supercontinent lay close to the South Pole, sedimentary deposits developed that documented one such transition. This chapter outlines the potential for study in material extracted from East Falkland during a mineral exploration programme in 2008. The geographical location of the Falkland Islands in the Permo-Carboniferous based upon Palæozoic reconstructions of Gondwana is discussed and the stratigraphic links between the Falklands deposits and other similar deposits from across the continent explored. Our understanding of how major climatic changes proceed, and the possible triggers behind them, could be significantly improved by studies of such deposits.