An ancient landscape, likely once home to rivers and forests, has been found beneath a mile of ice in Antarctica.
The area, untouched for more than 34 million years, covers around 12,000 square miles and is situated in a remote inland region in east Antarctica called Wilkes Land.
‘This finding is like opening a time capsule,’ said professor Stewart Jamieson, a geologist from Durham University, and lead author of a study into the landscape.
Jamieson and a team of scientists started examining the area in 2017 and, using satellite data and ice-penetrating radar, found towering ridges and deep valleys, suggesting it was once home to rivers and forests.
Millions of years ago, Antarctica drifted towards the South Pole and the resulting formation of ocean currents isolated it from warmer waters, leading to massive ice sheets.
Often glaciers grinds the terrain beneath them as they move, but because the ice in this part of Antarctica is so cold, it’s very slow-moving leading to minimal erosion.
As a result the landscape is preserved in remarkable detail.
The team identified three large blocks of elevated ground, with each one measuring between 75 and 105 miles long and up to 53 miles wide.
The blocks, meanwhile, are separated by valleys as wide as 25 miles and almost 3,900 feet deep.
‘The land underneath the East Antarctic ice sheet is less well-known than the surface of Mars,’ professor Jamieson said, the MailOnline reports.
‘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.’
Neil Ross, professor of environmental geophysics at Newcastle University and also a co-author of the study, which was published by in the journal Nature Communications, said research also helps them understand how the landscape ‘might evolve in response to future climate change’.
Scientists believe that drilling into the ice could help uncover more clues into to the landscape’s past and future.
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