Antarctica wasn’t always a desolate land of ice and snow. Earth’s southernmost continent was once home to rivers and forests teeming with life.
Using satellite observations and ice-penetrating radar, scientists are now getting a glimpse of the lost world of Antarctica.
Researchers said on Tuesday they had detected, buried beneath the continent’s ice sheet, a vast ancient landscape, filled with valleys and mountain ranges, apparently shaped by rivers before they were engulfed by glaciation long ago.
This landscape, located in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, bordering the Indian Ocean, covers an area approximately the size of Belgium.
Researchers said the landscape appears to date from at least 14 million years ago and perhaps more than 34 million years ago, when Antarctica entered its deep freeze.
“The landscape is like a snapshot from the past,” said Stewart Jamieson, professor of glaciology at Durham University in England and co-leader of the study published in the journal Nature Communications.
“It’s difficult to know what this lost world would have been like before the ice appeared, but it was certainly warmer then. Depending on how far back in time you go, you may have had climates that ranged from today’s Patagonian climate to something closer to tropical. Pollen from an ancient palm tree was discovered in Antarctica, not far from the coast of our study site,” Jamieson added.
Such an environment would likely have been populated by wildlife, Jamieson added, although fossil records from the region are too incomplete to indicate which animals might have inhabited it.
The ice above the ancient landscape measures 2.2km to 3km thick, according to study co-leader Neil Ross, professor of polar science and environmental geophysics at the University of Newcastle in England.
Por Will Dunham