ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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I still haven't solved the problem of how to provide light down inside the New Land Unknown, but I've got some interesting ideas for how the lifeforms got there.

Obviously it's not easy concept to accept the idea that a large valley with abundant plant and animal life could "somehow" exist in Antarctica and "somehow" be covered by a massive sheet of ice like the roof on a building.

But this morning I realized I was overlooking the way life got here in the first place. It originated in the ocean . . . and evolved into land-based animals!

So, here's my idea.

During the breakup of Gondwana (the super-continent), Antarctica broke away from Africa and sort of "moved south for the winter" — which usually means warmer weather, but not in this case. (A little science humor. )

Seriously, though, it didn't actually get colder there until long after Antarctica moved south. In fact, I found an article at SmartNews which includes this statement.
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During the Eocene, about 40 to 50 million years ago, Antarctica's climate resembled the modern-day Californian coast, while nearby polar islands were more akin to Florida, (Yale News reports).
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For the sake of honesty, I realize that my ideas about the New Land Unknown claim that it protected the dinosaurs living there from the extinction event (65 million years ago), and if Antarctica didn't freeze until 40 to 50 millions years ago, the New Land Unknown would have formed after the extinction event, killing all those lovely dinosaurs.

But the timeline for the freezing of Antarctic seems a bit less certain than the extinction event, 65 millions years ago (based the K-T boundary), so perhaps Antarctica became frozen 66 millions years ago (give or take a millennia).

If that's true, then my theory is back in business!

~ Okay, now we can get back to how the New Land Unknown was formed.

Stress on the landmass caused the formation of mountain ranges (according to sources I've read), along with a huge one-mile deep valley, with a smaller valley at one end which remained open to the sea for millions of years.

Admittedly I made up the part about the valley, along with the geological assumptions below, but they're all based on sound science, if not on proven evidence.

As geological stresses on the continent continue to push it around, the land changed in elevation, and at one point it was low enough to flood the giant valley with seawater.

Here comes the good part, guys. How the hell did that valley get a roof over it made of ice!?

Well, it happened like this.

Before the Earth's climate became colder and Antarctica began to freeze, this inland sea was filled with primeval life which swam into it from the ocean. Nothing unusual about that, right?

The shifting landmass eventually closed off the valley's outlet to the sea, and the lifeforms in it were trapped. But they didn't die. They evolved. ("Life finds a way." ~ Jeff Goldblume)

By the way, if you're wondering if the landmass under the Antarctic ice actually does have mountains and valleys, it does. In fact, it has a buttload of them!

Here's map of Antarctica without the ice, created from years of surveys. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)





Here's a short video about how scientist mapped the landmass under the ice. (Pay attention and take notes. There will be a quiz afterwards.)


_______________ NASA | The Bedrock Beneath


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Okay, where were we?

Oh, right. We're evolving.

As the ice cap formed, the surface of the inland sea froze to a depth of 1,000 feet. But below that point, the water remained liquid because of geothermal heating. So, the lifeforms remained alive. (After all, we think there might be lifeforms under the ice on Europa, so this situation would be similar.)

Meanwhile, an ancient ice age occurred (we've had lots of those, I'm told) and lowered the global sea level, causing most of the water in the inland sea to slowly drain out through a chasm which was the remnant of the smaller valley connecting the inland sea to the ocean.





Naturally the ice age also dropped the temperature around the globe, and the frozen surface of the slowly draining inland sea grew hard enough to remain in place as the water below it drained out. (Remember, it was supported in places by mountain peaks.)

When the expanding Antarctic ice eventually closed off the chasm in the bedrock that was draining the sea, their was still a very large lake with a plethora of lifeforms, surrounded by dry land.

The ground would be bare during this process, but fertile. All it needed was seeds. (I'll conjure up those shortly.

The lake in the picture below is not the size of the one in the New Land Unknown, and I couldn't actually remove the vegetation, so I just turned it brown. (I'm improvising my visual aids. Please use your imagination and picture it more accurately. )





But geothermal activity beneath the dwindling sea kept its temperature well above freezing, and the lifeforms continue to thrive, proliferate, and evolve.
There were Plesiosaurs paddling around in that big lake, gobbling up the megalodons, and vice versa.

Back when Antarctica was part of Gondwana and still connected to Africa, this land had plenty of vegetation. Many of the seeds from this vegetation were frozen as the temperature fell in Antarctica and the surface of the inland sea froze. Any seeds that were in the big valley would deteriorate in the seawater, but some of the seeds in the areas surrounding the ice layer covering the hidden sea would be preserved by the cold.

Antarctica's glacial ice is constantly moving downhill towards the coast, due to the pull of gravity. But at the five-second mark in the video below we can see large areas which don't have enough incline to cause the ice to migrate towards the coastline.

_____________ The Bedrock Beneath Antarctica


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The frozen surface of the hidden sea would be level and stable, unaffected by the glaciers sliding past it on one-or-more sides. But over the eons, these glaciers would deposit traces of the material they're carrying along: everything from fossilized bones to meteorite fragments . . . and ancient seeds, trapped in the ice fragments for millions of years.

If these seeds were pulled under the ice sheet that covers the New Land Unknown by the same glacial action that carries ice downhill to the coast, they would eventually emerge along the edge of the ice ceiling and thaw out in the slightly warmer air, just below the ice sheet.

Once thawed, they'd germinate, and the plants would spread down the slopes of the valley, as well as outward on all sides. The ice that brought them would also thaw out — and Mother Nature would lovingly water the little darlin's.

Sound crazy? Well, maybe is isn't. Consider this statement in a National Geographic article about frozen seeds found above the arctic circle.
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The oldest plant ever to be regenerated has been grown from 32,000-year-old seeds—beating the previous record holder by some 30,000 years.
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Streams would form along the sides of the valley from the melted ice, supplying fresh water to the large lake. Eventually the original "saltwater inland sea" would end up as a smaller freshwater lake, and the aquatic life in it would have time to evolve and adapt to the change.

Within a few thousand years the valley would be covered in vegetation, and after a few million years the vegetation would evolve new forms . . . just like the animal life is doing.





Gentlemen, I've managed to create a thousand-foot layer of ice suspended above a hidden valley in Antarctica which has a large lake populated by prehistoric aquatic creatures. Over millions of years, some of the aquatic life forms would evolve into land-based creatures, just like they did all over the world!

The ice-covered hidden valley would survive the extinction of the dinosaurs, thanks to their unique "fall out shelter" environment.

But I need help coming up with some way to provide light for the plants and animals! Sunlight is only available in the Antarctic for six months each year, even if there was some way to reflect it down through a 1,000 ft. layer of ice!

Guys, I'm open for suggestions. Help me save the New Land Unknown from a untimely demise . . . at least as interesting concept, if not as a real-world place.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)