It has been just revealed that finally, we are able to find out what lies under the deep Antarctic ice. Check out the latest reports about this really interesting matter below.
The Antarctic secrets revealed
Antarctica was once a thriving continent with rivers and forests that sustained life. However, it became a desolate land of ice and snow over time.
Scientists have recently used satellite observations and ice-penetrating radar to discover a large ancient landscape buried under the continent’s ice sheet.
The landscape, located in East Antarctica’s Wilkes Land region, is roughly equivalent to the size of Belgium or the U.S. state of Maryland. It features valleys and ridges that were apparently shaped by rivers before being engulfed by glaciation long ago.
The researchers believe that the landscape is at least 14 million years old, and it may date back to over 34 million years ago when Antarctica began to enter a deep freeze.
“The landscape is like a snapshot of the past,” said Stewart Jamieson, a professor of glaciology at Durham University in England and co-leader of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
“It is difficult to know what this lost world might have looked like before the ice came along, but it was certainly warmer back then.
Depending on how far back in time you go, you might have had climates that ranged anywhere from the climate of present-day Patagonia to something more approaching tropical.
Ancient palm tree pollen has been discovered from Antarctica, not far around the coast from our study site,” Jamieson added.
It is believed that the environment beneath the ice would have been home to various types of wildlife, although the fossil record of the area is too incomplete to suggest which species may have lived there, according to Jamieson.
The ice covering the ancient landscape measures around 1.4-1.9 miles (2.2 km to 3 km) thick, as stated by Neil Ross, a professor of polar science and environmental geophysics at Newcastle University in England who co-led the study.
The researchers highlighted that the land below the ice is even less familiar than the surface of Mars. To gain insight into this mysterious world, one way is to extract a core sample of sediments by drilling through the ice, which could reveal evidence of ancient flora and fauna, just as has been done with samples obtained in Greenland from 2 million years ago.
