25 May 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Scientists Ancient Landscape Not Seen For 14 Million Years Discovered Beneath Antarctic Ice

Researchers have uncovered an ancient landscape that remained hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) for at least 14 million years, using new satellite data and radar imaging.

This newly discovered landscape consists of ancient valleys and ridges, not dissimilar in size and scale to the glacially-modified landscape of North Wales, UK.

With ice-penetrating radar and satellite data, Durham University glaciologist Stewart Jamieson and colleagues mapped the topographic features of the landscape hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, to get a better understanding of how the ice sheet has fluctuated over time.

The researchers say preserved landscapes like this provide a rare opportunity to examine past ice conditions, but warming temperatures mean we are on track to return to the climate conditions that existed before the landscape was frozen, and it is possible that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet will retreat enough to change the landscape for the first time in at least 14 million years.

“The land underneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is less well known than the surface of Mars,” explained study author Professor Stewart Jamieson in a statement. “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.”

To Demonstrate where the study site is beneath the ice. Credit: Stewart Jamieson
To Demonstrate where the study site is beneath the ice. Credit: Stewart Jamieson

The researchers say preserved landscapes like this provide a rare opportunity to examine past ice conditions, but warming temperatures mean we are on track to return to the climate conditions that existed before the landscape was frozen, and it is possible that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet will retreat enough to change the landscape for the first time in at least 14 million years.

“The land underneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is less well known than the surface of Mars,” explained study author Professor Stewart Jamieson in a statement. “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.”

“As ice sheets fluctuate, they modify the landscape upon which they rest, leaving a fingerprint,” the researchers explain in their published paper. “But it is rare to find unmodified landscapes that record past ice conditions.”

The EAIS formed around 34 million years ago when Antarctica iced over and has advanced, retreated, thickened, and thinned, as temperatures fluctuated over geological epochs.

The ice sheet has remained fairly stable for the last 14 million years, covering the vast eastern part of the Antarctic continent, yet the extent of ice sheet retreat during warm intervals remains uncertain.

Scanning the Aurora-Schmidt basins, the team found an ancient landscape 300 kilometers (186 miles) inland from where the present-day ice sheet meets the sea.

Valley and ridge planforms (lines) identified in ice surface imagery compared with locations of topographic ‘highs’ (ridges) and ‘lows’ (valleys) identified from RES survey data (points). Credit: Nature
Valley and ridge planforms (lines) identified in ice surface imagery compared with locations of topographic ‘highs’ (ridges) and ‘lows’ (valleys) identified from RES survey data (points). Credit: Nature

It’s a small part of a vast continent, but a very revealing one. The area consists of three river-carved ‘blocks’ separated by deep troughs about 40 kilometers wide.

An intricate network of ridges and valleys covers the blocks, but these features aren’t consistent with the slow, modern-day northward ice flow across this part of the continent.

So it’s more likely the terrain formed prior to Antarctic glaciation, when rivers crossed the region to a coastline that appeared as the Gondwana supercontinent drifted apart. The researchers suggest the terrain was sculpted from rifts that initially opened up as Gondwana split, which eroded further into deep troughs.

Put together, it suggests this buried landscape likely took shape more than 14 million years ago. Because the network of rivers and valleys is so well preserved, it suggests the region iced over quickly, and that the EAIS hasn’t retreated far enough in the past 14 million years to expose the landscape to other erosive forces, like glaciers.

But ice sheet retreat may reach this region in the future, the researchers warn, if temperatures warm 3-7 °C like they did between 14 and 34 million years ago, when the EAIS formed.

“Given this discovery of an ancient landscape hidden in plain sight, and that of others, we propose that there will be other similar, as yet undiscovered, ancient landscapes beneath the EAIS,” the researchers conclude.

The study has been published in Nature Communications.

Cover Credit: Stewart Jamieson

Related Articles

Egyptian archaeologists discovered 16 meters long ancient papyrus with spells from the Book of the Dead

19 January 2023

19 January 2023

Archaeologists working in Egypt’s Saqqara region have unearthed a 16-meter-long ancient papyrus for the first time in a century. Saqqara...

Staging of religion on rock paintings that are thousands of years old in southern Egypt desert

10 May 2023

10 May 2023

Egyptologists at the University of Bonn and the University of Aswan want to systematically record hundreds of petroglyphs and inscriptions...

Archaeologists uncovered a kurgan tomb from a previously unknown culture

8 January 2023

8 January 2023

Archaeologists from the Siberian Federal University have unearthed a kurgan tomb and numerous bronze tools and artifacts from a previously...

4,500-year-old rare Canaanite goddess sculpture found by a farmer in Gaza Strip

25 April 2022

25 April 2022

A farmer in the city of Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip, found a rare 4,500-year-old stone sculpture while...

New Study: Middle Paleolithic Human Diet was More Diverse than Previously Thought

30 November 2023

30 November 2023

In a newly published study, archaeologists from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment at the University of Tübingen...

A ‘very rare’ clay figurine of god Mercury and a previously unknown Roman settlement were discovered at the excavation site in Kent

23 February 2024

23 February 2024

At a previously unknown Roman settlement that was formerly next to a busy port but is now 10 miles from...

Archaeologists unearthed the exact place of the tomb of Saint Nicholas, also known as “Santa Claus,” and the floor on which he walked

17 October 2022

17 October 2022

An excavation team has discovered the exact location of Saint Nicholas’ tomb, also known as “Santa Claus,” as well as...

Archaeologists have unearthed two early Aksumite Churches in Africa

11 December 2022

11 December 2022

New discoveries in the port city of Adulis on Eritrea’s Red Sea coast show that two ancient churches discovered more...

A Roman Votive Monument Discovered During Excavations at the Roman Open-Air Museum Hechingen-Stein

1 November 2024

1 November 2024

During recent excavations by the State Office for Monument Preservation (LAD) in the Stuttgart Regional Council and the Association for...

Archaeologists discovered a dragon made of mussel shells in in Inner Mongolia

26 August 2023

26 August 2023

Archaeologists discovered a dragon made of mussel shells earlier this week in Chifeng, North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which...

Giant handaxe discovered at Ice Age site in Kent, UK

8 July 2023

8 July 2023

Researchers in Kent in southeastern England have discovered a prehistoric handaxe so big it would have been almost impossible to...

Hoysala temples inch closer towards UNESCO recognition

7 February 2022

7 February 2022

The Indian Union government recently proposed the Somanathapura temple in Mysuru district and Chennakeshava and Hoysaleshwara temples in Belur and...

Ancient scrolls reveal astonishing information about the life of a Nabatean woman, who lived in the first century AD in Petra

18 December 2023

18 December 2023

Petra was the capital of a powerful trading empire two thousand years ago. It was established by the Nabateans, a...

A burial complex dating to the Second Intermediate Period has been discovered at the Dra Abu el-Naga necropolis at Luxor

12 April 2023

12 April 2023

At the Dra Abu el-Naga necropolis in Luxor, a family burial complex from the Second Intermediate Period has been found....

2,700-Year-Old Pre-Roman Iron Age necropolis Unearthed in Naples, Italy

8 May 2024

8 May 2024

An approximately 2,700-year-old Pre-Roman necropolis was discovered by archaeologists during excavations conducted in advance of a planned electric power plant...