That’s a fascinating discovery! Scientists have indeed uncovered a remarkably preserved ancient landscape buried deep beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in the Wilkes Land region. This hidden terrain—featuring river-carved valleys, ridges, plateaus, and other pre-glacial landforms—has been sealed under more than a mile (about 2+ km) of ice for over 34 million years, essentially since Antarctica transitioned from a warmer, greener continent to its current frozen state around the Eocene-Oligocene boundary.The area spans roughly 12,000 square miles (comparable to the size of Maryland or Belgium), and its exceptional preservation comes from the slow-moving, cold-based ice above it, which has acted like a protective “time capsule” with minimal erosion or alteration.Key details from the research (initially detailed in a 2023 Nature Communications study and echoed in recent reports):
- Researchers mapped it using ice-penetrating radar (radio-echo sounding) from aircraft and satellite data to reveal the bedrock topography without drilling.
- The landscape shows features like ancient river valleys (some up to ~25 miles wide and nearly 3,900 feet deep) and elevated highlands, formed when rivers flowed across a temperate Antarctica before the massive ice sheet formed.
- This offers clues to Antarctica’s dramatic climate shift from forested (with evidence of plants like palm pollen in some areas) to ice-covered, and how ice sheets interact with underlying topography.
- It also has implications for modern climate: understanding these stable bed conditions helps model how East Antarctica’s ice might respond to warming, including potential sea-level contributions if parts become unstable.
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