Using satellite data, researchers uncover an ancient river system hidden for millions of years beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
A watch and act warning is in place for Cypress Gardens and Millmerran Downs in Queensland. It is not safe to return. Keep up to date withFrom high above, the icy kingdom of Antarctica appears as a vast, flat wilderness. A white sheet, draped over the planet's southern pole.
It was first discovered in 2011 but Stewart Jamieson, a geographer from Durham University in the UK who co-led the latest research, said his team wanted to look at the features in more detail."We've returned to look at these because our community is realising that we don't just need to know the large-scale features, but we also need to understand the more detailed features too because these tell us about the past behaviour of the ice sheet," Professor Jamieson said.
Professor Jamieson and colleagues suggest these features may have been created by a river network that existed during the Cretaceous period, a time up until 66 million years ago when dinosaurs still roamed the Earth. "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," noted Neil Ross, a polar scientist at Newcastle University and co-author of the study, in a press release.The East Antarctic Ice Sheet locks away a huge amount of the planet's fresh water.
"It is understanding these differences which will help us understand how the ice sheet will respond to future climate change," he said.
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