Under a mile of Antarctic ice, scientists have uncovered a massive hidden landscape that hasn’t seen sunlight in over 34 million years—a stretch of ancient valleys and ridges that may have once supported rivers, forests, and life.
Researchers used satellite scans and ice-penetrating radar to spot the region, buried deep in East Antarctica’s Wilkes Land. It covers about 12,000 square miles (roughly the size of Maryland) and has stayed almost perfectly intact, frozen in place by cold, barely moving ice for over 34 million years.
“This finding is like opening a time capsule,” said Professor Stewart Jamieson, a geologist at Durham University and lead author of the study, published in Nature Communications.
Lost World Unearthed Beneath Antarctica Ice After 34 Million Years
The team identified three massive blocks of elevated land, each between 75 and 105 miles long, with deep valleys nearly 25 miles wide and almost 3,900 feet deep cutting between them. These features suggest the area was once shaped by flowing rivers, possibly even home to dense vegetation before it was sealed beneath an ice sheet tens of millions of years ago.
Unlike most glaciers, which grind and flatten the terrain beneath them, the ice in this part of Antarctica moves so slowly that the landscape beneath has barely eroded. The result is a snapshot of prehistoric Earth, frozen in near-perfect condition.
“The land underneath the East Antarctic ice sheet is less well-known than the surface of Mars,” Jamieson told MailOnline. “We’re investigating a small part of that landscape in more detail to see what it can tell us about the evolution of the landscape and the evolution of the ice sheet.”
Professor Neil Ross, a co-author from Newcastle University, said the research could also help predict how Antarctica might respond to future climate change.
The next frontier is drilling. Scientists believe boring into this buried world could reveal ancient soil, organic material, and environmental clues about a time when Antarctica was warm and green—before it became the frozen giant we know today.
It’s not every day you find a prehistoric Earth carved into the underside of a continent. But this discovery makes one thing apparent: the planet still has secrets, and some of its most astonishing ones are still locked in ice.
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