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Beneath Antarctica's Ice, Evidence of Lost Continents!

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 3:09 pm    Post subject: Beneath Antarctica's Ice, Evidence of Lost Continents! Reply with quote



This article didn't seem very interesting until I started Thinking Like A Writer, and suddenly the gorgeous photos looked like shots from a movie! Shocked

I juiced up the article with a few comments about ideas that came to me. They're the text in blue below.

_______________________________________

Beneath Antarctica's Ice, Intriguing Evidence of Lost Continents

By Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor | November 13, 2018

~ A new map reveals the remnants of ancient continents that lurk beneath Antarctica's ice.

The map shows that East Antarctica is made up of multiple cratons, which are the cores of continents that came before, according to study leader Jörg Ebbing, a geoscientist at Kiel University in Germany.

"This observation leads back to the break-up of the supercontinent Gondwana and the link of Antarctica to the surrounding continents," Ebbing told Live Science. "The findings help reveal fundamental facts about Earth's tectonics and how Antarctica's land and ice sheets interact," he wrote in an email.

By measuring these changes, GOCE provided the data to make a full gravity map of the planet. Ebbing and his team used other satellite data to virtually strip the ice from Antarctica to focus on the bedrock beneath.





Caption: GOCE orbited Earth from 2009 to 2013, mapping gravity differences below to tease out the planet's topography and interior structure.
_______________________________________

Bud: Brother, that sure sounds like the opening scene in a movie about a Lost Word hidden under the ice! We've even got a shot of the special effect showing the spacecraft mapping the hidden area! The only difference between this idea and The Land Unknown is that a shield of ice is keeping the geothermal heat inside, instead of a cloud layer. (Heck, that wouldn't work anyway!)
_______________________________________

They found the evidence of the continent's history as part of Gondwana, a supercontinent made of the modern Southern Hemisphere continents that broke up about 180 million years ago. East Antarctica's crust is thicker than West Antarctica's, at between 25 miles and 37 miles (40 and 60 kilometers) thick, compared with the West's 12 miles and 22 miles (20 and 35 km) thick.

"The East Antarctic crust is also a mishmash of old cratons," Ebbing said, "including the Mawson Craton, which has a matching fragment in southern Australia."
_______________________________________

Bud: Perfect! This Lost Word was part of the supercontenient filled with dinosaurs. In our story, the crust is less than a mile thick in one region, and several mountain peaks thrust up against the underside, serving as pillars to hold up the "ceiling." (Wow, this story just writes itself!) Very Happy
_______________________________________

"The new data reveals more complexity in East Antarctica's ancient cratons than previously known," Ebbing said. "The modern-day continent is also host to regions called orogens, which are crumpled-up regions where ancient continents would have rammed together to build mountains."
_______________________________________

Bud: Ah-Ha! I knew it! The mountains slowly pushed up the "ice ceiling" and expanded a relatively small area into a much larger one. We'll figure out later how the initial population of dinosaurs and plant life survived in the original area.
_______________________________________

"Another intriguing discovery was a low-density area beneath Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica. This low-density portion of the upper mantle — the layer of the planet beneath the crust — may be due to an ancient mantle plume," Ebbing and his colleagues wrote Nov. 5 in the journal Scientific Reports. "Mantle plumes are places in the mantle where hot blobs of rock rise like the lumps in a lava lamp. They can sometimes lead to the formation of volcanoes. The Antarctic mantle plume would date back to sometime in the last 66 million years, according to the researchers."
_______________________________________

Bud: Bingo! More geothermal heat than you could shake a stick at. (Put a marshmallow on the end and you could toast it!) Good Lord, I almost feel guilty taking any credit for this idea! This Lost World beneath the ice has been heated by geothermal energy for millions of years, keeping the area habitable.

Now all we have to do is figure out a plausible way of lighting the whole area. Hmmm . . .

We might get away with saying the ice above the region is so remarkable clear that it refracts sunlight down to the land beneath if during the summer months. We might even REALLY stretch credibility by saying that sunlight is gathered across a region on the surface which is larger than the Land Unknown below, and it focuses the sunlight like a magnify glass.

Before you roll your eyes and think, "Oh brother . . . " I'm only suggesting that more light reaches the land below than expected, because the angled sunlight during the summer months falls on the snow covering over a wide area and is focused to some degree on a smaller region below.

If this idea has you thinking warm thoughts about Lost Worlds in Antarctica, here's a somewhat related article.


Huge Lakes Thought to Be Hiding Beneath Antarctica's Ice Seem to Have Vanished
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 13, 2018 3:38 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Add these facts to the concept above, concerning my suggestion that the Lost World under the ice was caused by the land rising up and lifting the ice layer above it. Very Happy

________________________________

Antarctica Is Getting Taller, and Here’s Why

By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | June 21, 2018

~ Bedrock under Antarctica is rising more swiftly than ever recorded — about 1.6 inches (41 millimeters) upward per year. And thinning ice in Antarctica may be responsible.

That's because as ice melts, its weight on the rock below lightens. And over time, when enormous quantities of ice have disappeared, the bedrock rises in response, pushed up by the flow of the viscous mantle below Earth's surface, scientists reported in a new study.



______________
________________________________

So, the ice above the Lost World region became so thin that the buried mountains pushed it upward, making the region larger and the ice ceiling higher.

A warm period in Antarctica caused the top layer of snow to melt, forming a large lake on top of a relatively thin ice layer. When temperatures went down again many years later, the lake froze into a layer of remarkably clear ice.

Shallow lakes have done that when conditions were exactly right.

Meanwhile, all those lucky dinosaurs who were completely protected from the dino-killing asteroid 65 million years ago were free to just "do what comes naturally" — they grew fruitful and multiplied like crazy! Very Happy

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Pow
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 2:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Land Unknown from the 50s, and Disney's Island at the Top of the World dealt with lost continents nestled within the frozen regions of the north.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Yes, indeed, they certainly did! I own 'em both and I love The Land Unknow!

But my idea would be bigger, better . . . cooler! (And I don't mean the temperature. Wink)

What you're probably thinking is, "Bud, how the hell do the explorers get down to this New Land Unknown if it's under a mile ice?"

Well . . . I haven't got that worked out yet, but it probably starts with an ice drilling project to get core samples from deep in the ice (they've done that several times in Antarctic). and the drill punches into a gap. The scientist get all excited when they learn it is NOT an underground lake!

They could then lower a laser device down into the hole on a long wire and get back readings that indicate an impossibly large cavern below the ice.

I found out that the mean depth of the Antarctic ice is 1.32 miles. But the thickness of the ice above the New Land Unknown could be much less than that — say about 1,000 feet. Because of the extreme cold below the upper surface (-100° F), the hardness of Antarctic ice is close to 6 Mohs, which is as hard as concrete!

I Googled "How long has Antarctica been frozen?" and got this.
________________________________

The polar ice caps melted for a while after that and it wasn't until Africa and Antarctica separated around 160 million years ago that it began to cool again. By 23 million years ago, Antarctica was mostly icy forest and for the last 15 million years, it has been a frozen desert under a thick ice sheet.
________________________________

Perfect! A big part of the "icy forest" was miraculously preserved under the ice (somehow) and kept warm by geothermal heat which warms a big lake.

Remember, my fictional New Land Unknown has several conveniently located mountains down the center, and their peaks are embedded in the the ice ceiling, supporting it. I'm no engineer, but I wouldn't be surprised if a 1,000-ft-thick ceiling of ice as hard as concrete might actually hold up.

Just to give you an idea of what I have in mind, I whipped up the picture below with Paint.net in about 20 minutes, using a nice picture of New Zealand with the sky replace by an aerial photo of the North Pole . . . turned upside down. Very Happy

~ Click on the image to view a larger version.*






Naturally the bright sunlight is all wrong, but you get the idea. Cool
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 15, 2018 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

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. Very Happy

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. Laughing)

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.
________________________________

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).
________________________________

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. Sad

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! Very Happy

~ 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!? Shocked

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! Very Happy

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


__________


Okay, where were we?

Oh, right. We're evolving. Cool

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. Wink

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. Cool)






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


__________


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. Very Happy

Sound crazy? Well, maybe is isn't. Consider this statement in a National Geographic article about frozen seeds found above the arctic circle.
________________________________

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.
________________________________

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)


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Custer
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2018 9:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The first thing, obviously, is to sign up Jeff Goldblum for the movie project...
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The most obvious source of light could be from bioluminescence , both in the animals and fish.

From Wiki :

Quote:
Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light by a living organism. It is a form of chemiluminescence. Bioluminescence occurs widely in marine vertebrates and invertebrates, as well as in some fungi, microorganisms including some bioluminescent bacteria and terrestrial invertebrates such as fireflies. In some animals, the light is bacteriogenic, produced by symbiotic organisms such as Vibrio bacteria; in others, it is autogenic, produced by the animals themselves.

Ever hear of PELLUCIDER?

________

You may have the makings of a great story!

The only problem here is that the light is not very bright.

One other solution could be that at the top of one of the highest mountains there is a flowing pool of phosphorus that is perpetually burning. OR there is a vein of natural gas burning on the mountain peak. There should be a natural opening to the Antarctic air allowing a free exchange of oxygen to the open space. This would give this "Unknown World" a sort of twilight lumen level....Enough to allow photosenthisis in the plants....Most of which would be ferns I would imagine.

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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 6:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sodium when exposed to water flash/burns, so an earthquake cracking open a vein of pure sodium near a large natural gas deposit leaking would result in igniting a "perpetual" flame of sorts.

A few million years of gas?

A stretch perhaps.

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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 18, 2018 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I LOVE the Pellucidar series, and I love the concept even more than the books themselves.

As wonderful as it is, however, it's just as impossible as my New Land Unknown idea. I won't even go into all the reasons for why it couldn't exist, but I love the fact that Burroughs didn't let logic get in the way of creating such a wonderful place, as well as giving it a miniature sun at the center of the empty area inside the Earth — and he even included a miniature MOON which hover a few miles above this incredible inside-out landscape!

Like Burroughs, I had fun coming up with the semi-plausible ways in which the New Land Unknown was formed and managed to end up with prehistoric beast living there AFTER the hollow area was created by the receding water beneath the ice.

But the weakest part of my description was the suggestion that seeds embedded in the glacial ice were deposited along the rim of the ice sheet and then were somehow pulled downward for 500 feet until the emerged beneath the ice, in the valley below.

Damn, that was lame, guys. I apologize. Embarassed

But today I realized that there was a much better method to get ancient frozen seeds down into the New Land Unknown so that plant life could populate the valley after the water receded and left the large lake where the hidden sea had been.

Suppose that the land above the ice sheet on one end of the hidden valley had a distinct downward slope for fifty miles or so, along with a depression which contained a modest-sized glacier.








The glacier would move downhill —





— until it was funneled into a crevasse in the bedrock that extended down under the 500 ft thick sheet of ice which covered the New Land Unknown — a literal "frozen river" which ran down into the ground, forced by gravity into a tunnel formed by the crevasse and the ice sheet which covered the hidden valley below.


________


The crevasse would carry the glacier under the 500 ft sheet of ice, inching its way along through the gap in the bedrock until it came out into the New Land Unknown, high on the side of the sloping landscape at one end of the valley.





Once it emerged from the confines of the crevasse which was covered by the ice sheet, it would move slowly down the slope towards the lake.





As it neared the lake (warmed by geothermal energy) the increasingly warmer air would melt the ice, and a stream of fresh water would flow down from the glacier's terminus to the shore of the lake.

In the years after Antarctica froze and locked the seeds which remained from its previous tropic period inside the ice, some of those seeds would be carried down the long slope above the ice sheet which covered the New Land Unknown, and they would be pull into the crevasse as the glacier traveled under the frozen "ceiling" of this hidden world until they were finally deposited on the shore of the lake . . . and watered by the melting glacial ice.

The sprouting vegetation would flourish in the warm region along the shore the lake, and eventually it would spread all across the New Land Unknown! Very Happy

I like this new theory quite a lot. If seems to be quite plausible. Very Happy

PS: The Science Channel had an episode of Unearth tonight about Machu Picchu, and when saw the opening images I suddenly realized why the Incas built a magnificent city on a remote mountain top when the only modes of transportation they had to get there were by traveling on foot and by riding lamas! Shocked

Suddenly I realized that Machu Picchu was a spaceport for the aliens who provided guidance to these primitive people, and they didn't want the rest of the population to see the spacecraft landing and taking off from the cities down at ground level!

In other words, Machu Picchu was high in the Andes and remotely located for the sake of aliens coming down from the sky!

I'll start a thread soon about this next "Lost World" I've discovered in a few days. Very Happy

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Ticket2theMoon
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2018 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

____________________________________'

So, here’s an article on plant life in the type of environment you’re proposing. Fascinating stuff!


Life in the dark: plant growth beneath the sea ice


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 29, 2018 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Tonight I had a long talk on the phone with my daughter, (All Sci-Fi member Ticket2theMoon), and she was fascinated by this whole idea. She understood everything I've described, as well as what all the jpegs illustrated.

Her reply above was added to this post before I even finished THIS comment! Cool

During our phone conversation, her comments proved that she appreciated the suggestions made by Gord about the bio-luminescence which might provide the light needed by the New Land Unknown, and she understood just how the lifeforms evolved in this strange environment after it had formed.

I was proud of my daughter's ability to appreciate the concepts her father had presented. Very Happy

I'm sure other members of All Sci-Fi have understood it just as well . . . but I'm disappointed that so few of you folks have replied to my post with intelligent additions to his discussion. Sad

Hopefully we'll get more replies in the next few weeks.

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~ The Space Children (1958)


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PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2019 12:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote




More evidence that the New Land Unknown I proposed could actually exists!

Antarcitica's Elsworth Trench is almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon, and it stretches almost all the way across the continent, ending at the coast. The lowest point is 2000 meters (6500 feet) below sea level.

This fits perfectly with my suggestion that the ocean extended into the valley I call the New Land Unknown when Antarctica was warm and covered with forests . . . and dinosaurs.


Scientists discover giant trench under Antarctic ice
________________________________

The researchers were charting the Ellsworth Subglacial Highlands — an ancient mountain range buried beneath several miles of Antarctic ice-by combining data from satellites and ice-penetrating radar towed behind snowmobiles and onboard small aircraft.

The project uncovered a massive subglacial trench, or valley, that is up to 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) deep and more than 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) across. For comparison, the Grand Canyon is 1.13 miles (1.8 kilometers) deep at its deepest point. In places, the floor of the subglacial valley is more than 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) below sea level.

________________________________




How do I know it had dinosaurs back then? Because of articles like this one in Discover Magazine.

When Dinosaurs Roamed Antarctica
________________________________

Millions of years ago, dinosaurs living in Antarctica enjoyed a mild climate, temperate waters and abundant vegetation.

Today, scientists looking for their fossils on that same continent face a much different place. Ice covers 99 percent of Antarctica, sudden snowstorms can bury dig sites, and gale-force winds scour the land. Extreme conditions in Antarctica are one reason this part of the dinosaur fossil record remained incomplete for so long.

Researchers funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP), have painstakingly recovered fossils from the southernmost continent. Their discoveries reveal how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals lived and died in Antarctica, and how they moved between it and other parts of the world.






Finally, enjoy this fast-paced, educational, funny-as-hell video about the history of Antarctica, including the PRE-history as well. Laughing

_________ A History of Antarctica, w/ Dinosaurs


__________

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