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Antarctica and the Southern Ocean system evolved in the Cenozoic, but the details of this complex evolution are just beginning to emerge via high-resolution investigations of globally distributed marine sedimentary sequences. Here we review the recent progress in defining the orbital-scale evolution of the Antarctic/Southern Ocean system, with particular attention paid to new high-resolution multi-proxy records generated across intervals of abrupt Antarctic ice growth in the Paleogene and early Neogene. This more detailed perspective has allowed researchers to assess the processes and feedbacks involved in the Cenozoic evolution of the Antarctic cryosphere, absent potential complication of the paleoceanographic record by a substantial Northern Hemisphere ice volume signal. In this paper, we review the new tools being used to examine these high-resolution records, assess lead-lag relationships between ice volume, temperature, and carbon cycling during intervals of abrupt Antarctic ice growth, and consider the resulting implications for the global climate system. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.