Scientists discover 34 million year old hidden river world buried under 2 km of Antarctic ice

Time of India

08-06-2025

The North and South poles remain hidden beneath the thick icy cover of snow year-round, and as a result, most parts of the poles remain largely unexplored by humankind, concealing numerous secrets underneath.
Beneath the thick ice of East Antarctica lies a hidden world, untouched for over 34 million years. This frozen expanse, more than 10 million square kilometers wide, has long concealed a forgotten landscape.
The way leading to the secrets of the hidden landscape
A team led by Stewart Jamieson at Durham University made this discovery with help from RADARSAT, a Canadian satellite system. The technology allowed them to detect small changes in the ice surface, revealing the shape of the land buried below.
What found something as extraordinary as an ancient river-carved terrain, that was about the size of Wales, locked under nearly two kilometers of ice.
'It's like uncovering a time capsule,' Jamieson said as reported by the Brighter Side news. The untouched condition of the landscape might be due to its extreme age. Preserved beneath the ice sheet's crushing weight, the land remained unchanged since long before glaciation began.
This hidden world dates back to a period when Antarctica was not the icy desert we know today.
Back then, the continent was part of Gondwana, a supercontinent shared with Africa, South America, and Australia. Instead of ice, Antarctica had flowing rivers, forests, and roaming dinosaurs. That changed about 20 million years ago when glaciers took over, freezing the region's history beneath a growing sheet of ice.
How did Antarctica go from Gondwana to Glaciation?
The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) began forming during the Eocene-Oligocene transition around 34 million years ago, as global temperatures plummeted and CO2 levels dropped below a critical threshold.
High-altitude regions such as the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains and Transantarctic Mountains became nuclei for the growing ice masses. Over millions of years, these glaciers expanded, eventually combining into the massive ice sheet that persists today.
The EAIS has undergone significant fluctuations throughout its history. During the Miocene period, approximately 17 to 14 million years ago, the ice sheet expanded and retreated in response to climatic shifts.
Evidence from marine sediments suggests periods of retreat during warmer intervals, such as the mid-Pliocene warm period and the interglacial periods of the Pleistocene. These fluctuations left persistent imprints on the subglacial area, giving it the features that are now detectable through modern geophysical surveys.
Technology tells us more
Using the RADARSAT satellite system, scientists observed subtle changes in the slope of the ice's surface.
These tiny clues helped reveal a massive, hidden terrain carved by rivers millions of years ago, long before the ice sheet even existed.
To dig deeper, scientists used radio-echo sounding (RES) and computer models to study the land below. Their discoveries showed a landscape that didn't match modern ice flow patterns, proving it had formed long before glaciation. They even used flexural modeling to test whether ancient highlands were once part of one continuous landform, later broken up by natural erosion.
But why does this matter today?
Understanding this ancient environment helps scientists predict how the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) could behave in our warming world. Jamieson's team, whose study appeared in Nature Communications, talked about the importance of this work for climate science. 'Understanding how this massive sheet might respond to human-driven climate change is a pressing concern,' he said.
This discovery also tells a bigger message that the Earth's past, present, and future are deeply connected. As noted in Scientific American, these buried landscapes are like time machines. By unlocking their secrets, we can better prepare for tomorrow's climate challenges, and possibly help protect the fragile ecosystems still clinging to life today.