00:00Antarctica, a frozen world in a freezing cold of minus 43 degrees Celsius, covered with ice for millions of years.
00:08But this has not always been the case.
00:10Scientists have just made an incredible discovery.
00:14Deeply buried under the ocean floor, tiny drops of golden amber.
00:19This means that once, Antarctica was full of life and was covered with vast forests.
00:25However, an event has occurred.
00:27An event that could radically change our perception of the future.
00:31For millions of years, Antarctica has been a land swept by powerful winds, where no vegetation can grow.
00:38But researchers who have explored this region have decided to dig the depths of the Antarctic surface.
00:45They have drilled several thousand meters under the ice and extracted layers of ancient sediments.
00:50It was there, trapped in time, that they discovered these fragments of amber.
00:55Amber, fossilized resin from trees, is found on all continents and often contains perfectly preserved traces of extinct species.
01:04Insects frozen in their flight, pollen frozen in time.
01:08These golden drops can preserve ancient and tiny ecosystems.
01:13On all continents, but not in Antarctica until then.
01:19The tiny discovered drop, measuring between 0.5 and 1 mm, as small as a grain of sand, but of great importance,
01:29had flowed from the bark of a tree about 90 million years ago.
01:35What is even more fascinating is that amber is only formed in certain species of trees.
01:40Those that thrive in humid and temperate tropical forests or in the jungle.
01:45It was then that a revelation was made.
01:47Antarctica was once a tropical forest.
01:53These tiny fragments of amber, visible only under the microscope, tell us the living history of a flourishing ecosystem.
02:00About 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs dominated the Earth,
02:07Antarctica was to be covered by dense and swampy forests,
02:11populated by majestic conifers, ferns and ancient plants.
02:16Some of these fragments showed signs of damage,
02:20indicating that the trees at the origin of these drops had been damaged, probably by fires or parasites.
02:28Despite all this, and despite the millions of years spent in the seabed, this amber has surprisingly resisted well.
02:35It remains solid, transparent, without the slightest crack.
02:38In general, amber, when subjected to intense pressure and those of extreme temperatures, disintegrates little by little.
02:46But this fragment has survived, which suggests that others may also have survived,
02:52and that other discoveries could emerge from the ocean depths.
02:57That said, this discovery was not the first sign that Antarctica was not the frozen world we know today.
03:04In 2017, a team of researchers dug deep into the surface of the seabed,
03:09near the Ile-du-Pain glacier, on the west coast of Antarctica.
03:13They have thus extracted sediment carrots buried for millions of years.
03:17This discovery was amazing.
03:19In these layers of sediment, researchers have updated fossilized roots, pollen, spores,
03:26as much evidence as an ancient forest had thrived on these lands.
03:30Since this discovery, the team has not stopped analyzing these elements,
03:34dedicating several years to decomposing the sediments into thousands of fragments,
03:38and carefully examining them under fluorescent microscopes, without damaging anything.
03:44In 2020, this same team discovered another key element of the puzzle.
03:48New samples of sediment taken from the seabed highlighted a landscape made up of dense forests,
03:54rivers, and humid areas.
03:56An environment that looked more like that of the Pacific Northwest or New Zealand.
04:02But why was Antarctica so hot at that time?
04:06The answer lies in the atmosphere.
04:0890 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels were extremely high on Earth.
04:15This period corresponded to one of the hottest moments in the history of the planet,
04:19with temperatures even reaching the poles.
04:22Imagine, Antarctica had no ice caps.
04:26Instead, Antarctica could have sheltered swarming insects,
04:31and perhaps even wandering dinosaurs through these forests.
04:35But to understand what happened to them, the team still needs to discover more evidence.
04:40Antarctica remains a place full of mystery.
04:43Its snowy and icy cover makes its study difficult,
04:47to the point that we do not even know its true shape and dimensions.
04:51Some areas of the ice cap measure nearly 5 km in thickness,
04:56the equivalent of half the depth of the Marianas Gorge,
05:00the deepest oceanic gorge on the planet.
05:03Fortunately, the snow has remarkable quality.
05:06It manages to freeze time with perfect precision.
05:09Layer after layer, year after year, it buries the natural past, acting like a time capsule.
05:16At first, the fresh snow is light and moves easily with the wind, filled with air.
05:21But as the layers accumulate, they compress,
05:25expelling the air and hardening into a dense ice.
05:28This freezing pressure imprisons everything inside,
05:31preserving ancient plants, animals and even entire landscapes.
05:36The elements are literally frozen in time,
05:39because this extreme cold slows down the decomposition process.
05:44It stops the growth of bacteria, thus preventing putrefaction,
05:48and allows an almost perfect preservation for thousands, even millions of years.
05:54It is precisely this phenomenon that occurs in Antarctica.
05:58Scientists have to dig deep into this snow
06:01to discover what this place looked like millions of years ago.
06:06What they have discovered?
06:08An entire world lost, buried under kilometers of ice.
06:13This discovery is located under the thickest ice in East Antarctica,
06:17near subglacial basins Aurora and Schmidt.
06:22The weight of the ice, immense and constant for millions of years,
06:26has actually protected the Earth from erosion.
06:30Scientists call it the ghost of the landscape of Antarctica.
06:35And it's really not like the flat and smooth desert we see up there.
06:39They have discovered rivers that used to flow freely,
06:43now frozen on the spot.
06:45Valleys carved by the water.
06:47Even three huge hills at tight peaks.
06:51But what happened?
06:53To understand this, we have to go back in time,
06:57to the time when Antarctica was still part of a supercontinent that has now disappeared.
07:03Hundreds of millions of years ago,
07:05what we call today Antarctica was part of the Gondwana,
07:09a gigantic supercontinent that included South America,
07:13Africa, India, Australia and Antarctica,
07:18all merged together.
07:20However, as the tectonic plates of the Earth moved slowly,
07:25the Gondwana fragmented.
07:28Antarctica was torn apart, its land stretching and fracturing.
07:32The vast ice caps that formed later covered these broken lands,
07:37preserving them as frozen fossils.
07:39As the ice moved and melted,
07:43valleys emerged,
07:45and ancient rivers probably flowed the water to a coast,
07:49which was then located hundreds of kilometers from its current position.
07:54But that's not all Antarctica holds.
07:57If you removed the ice, you would not discover a flat and deserted continent.
08:02You would see a spectacular landscape, majestic mountains,
08:06deep valleys and even active volcanoes.
08:10In Western Antarctica, at least 138 volcanoes are buried under the ice.
08:15One of them, Mount Erebus, is still active,
08:19and inside it has hot enough volcanic caves to walk around in t-shirts.
08:26Ah, and if that doesn't seem strange enough,
08:30Erebus also spits out gold.
08:33Yes, real gold particles from the depths of the Earth.
08:37Scientists believe it happens because magma,
08:41this overheated and semi-melted rock under the Earth's surface,
08:45churns out liquid gold as it rises.
08:48Every day, Erebus releases about 90 grams of gold,
08:52which is about 6,000 euros per day.
08:55In one year, that's 29 kilograms,
08:58which is more than 2 million euros spent on smoke.
09:02Unfortunately, before we catch our shovels,
09:05we must remember that these are microscopic particles.
09:08They often measure less than 60 micrometers,
09:11which is thinner than a human hair,
09:14not to mention that they are scattered up to 1,000 kilometers from the volcano.
09:18Finding them is therefore impossible.
09:22This simply proves that,
09:24even in a place as pitiful as this vast white desert,
09:27many fascinating mysteries await to be revealed.
09:31Thus, despite the extreme conditions, life still persists there.
09:35In 2017, researchers dug deep under the ice of the Ross barrier,
09:40hoping to find water.
09:42But to their great surprise,
09:44what they discovered was much more incredible.
09:48A river, hidden under 500 meters of ice,
09:51lurking in the darkness.
09:53And inside, hundreds of small creatures,
09:56resembling shrimps.
09:59They rushed around the camera,
10:01obstructing the lens while welcoming the researchers.
10:05At the bottom of these frozen caves,
10:07DNA traces revealed the presence of moss, algae,
10:10and perhaps even tiny unknown creatures.
10:14So it seems that,
10:16even in one of the most extreme environments on the planet,
10:18life still manages to adapt.
10:20And who can say what else we could discover
10:23at the edge of the South Pole.
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