Researchers have revealed the existence of an ancient landscape that has been hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet for millions of years.
The experts mapped out some 12,350 square miles of the lost terrain through the ice using both satellite data and radio-echo sounding techniques.
Based on its topography, which features a series of valleys and ridges, the landscape appears to have been formed by the action of rivers.
The team believes such was formed at least 14 million years ago — and perhaps even before the initial growth of the East Antarctic ice around 34 million years ago.
The existence of the landscape, the team said, implies that the ice sheet in the area studied has been stable for a long period.
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The study was undertaken by glaciologist Professor Stewart Jamieson of Durham University in England and his colleagues.
Jamieson said: “The land underneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is less well known than the surface of Mars.
“And that’s a problem, because that landscape controls the way that ice in Antarctica flows, and it controls the way it might respond to past, present, and future climate change.
“So, 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.”
Jamieson continued: “What we find is an ancient land surface that has not been eroded by the ice sheet and instead looks like it was created by rivers before the ice came along.
“This tells us that there hasn’t been a lot of change in this particular area.”
“[And that] indicates that although this part of the ice sheet may have retreated during warmer times in the past, the conditions at this site likely did not change.
“That helps us understand how the ice sheet might respond to future and ongoing warming.”
Paper co-author and environmental geophysicist Professor Neil Ross of Newcastle University, England, added: “It is remarkable that this landscape, ‘hidden in plain sight’ for many years, can tell us so much about the early, and long-term, history of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.”
The work, he added, is also “helping us to understand how it might evolve in response to future climate change.
“This had been something of a slow burn project, but one that has now come to fruition in an exciting paper involving a great research team.”
This is not the only landscape the researchers have found beneath Antarctica — having previously mapped out mountain ranges, canyons and lakes under the ice — and more are likely to be unearthed across the continent in the future.
Jamieson concluded: “We’ll continue exploring the landscape, doing our best to fill in gaps where surveys don’t exist, and using that information to understand how the ice sheet and its underlying landscape have changed over their long history.”
The full findings of the study were published in the journal Nature Communications.
