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For centuries, Antarctica’s massive ice wall has concealed whatever lies beyond it. Now, new observations suggest that the ice is revealing strange features scientists never expected to see. What’s emerging raises unsettling questions about what may have been hidden beneath the frozen edge
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00:01In 1985, Chilean biologist Dr. Daniel Torres was doing a census of mammals and collecting marine refuse on Cape Charest
00:10in Antarctica.
00:12He was going to pick up a big plastic container when he noticed one white rock among the dark volcanic
00:19stones.
00:20It turned out to be a human skull, and as Dr. Torres found later, it belonged to a young woman
00:27who lived in southern Chile.
00:28She was most likely in her early 20s and starving when she passed away.
00:33Several years later, scientists also found fragments of femurs and used DNA analysis to prove they belonged to the same
00:41lady.
00:42This discovery could change history as we know it.
00:46How did a female skull end up in Antarctica, at a spot where sealers used to camp?
00:51Women usually wouldn't go on sealing trips in the early 1800s.
00:56To add to the mystery, there was nothing else found at the site.
01:00No papers, no special markings, no tools or other objects that could tell us who she was, what happened to
01:07her, or how she ended up there.
01:10It could mean that people from Chile had a camp here before anyone else set foot on the continent.
01:19Scientists made another unique discovery in Antarctica, an ancient meteorite fragment that could be proof there's life on other planets.
01:27They believe this meteorite is over 4 billion years old, and it might have come straight from Mars.
01:33In 1996, NASA scientists announced that they found special chemical marks on the rock.
01:41Some ancient Martian organisms may have left them behind, but not everyone was convinced.
01:47And later studies found that the carbon-rich chemicals on the rock probably weren't biological at all.
01:53Long ago, when Mars was a much wetter place, massive space rocks collided with the planet.
02:00These collisions produced intense heat and changed the landscape.
02:04The rock found in Antarctica likely survived two such impacts before a third powerful strike hurled it into space.
02:12While still on Mars, this rock bathed in water that moved through tiny cracks in its surface.
02:19This water probably left behind strange carbon bubbles that scientists thought might be the fingerprints of ancient life.
02:29Researchers recover more rocks from space in Antarctica than in any other part of the world.
02:35But you don't expect to see a pyramid there, right?
02:38I could make you try to solve this mystery, but okay, this object only looks like a pyramid.
02:44In fact, it's a mountain.
02:46You can easily find it on Google Maps if you scroll all the way to the Ellsworth Mountains.
02:52It's the tallest mountain range in Antarctica, and it stretches for almost 250 miles.
02:58Explorers from the British Antarctic Expedition first found this unusually shaped mountain and nicknamed it the Pyramid.
03:05Over the past hundred years, many people have wondered if there really was a pyramid in Antarctica.
03:11And if yes, who built it?
03:14But scientists totally reigned on this icy parade as they explained there is nothing unusual about a rocky peak showing
03:21above the ice.
03:22It's just a coincidence that this one and the neighboring peak are cut in a pyramid shape.
03:30Researchers at the University of Colorado found a 10,000-year-old hunting tool near Yellowstone National Park.
03:38It was buried in ice, but as it melted because the temperatures got warmer, the tool came to the surface.
03:44Researchers were keeping this find a secret for a year.
03:47They wanted to get the findings published in a scientific journal before amateur archaeologists would get there and start their
03:54own search operations on the site and disturb it.
03:57The dart, which is about three feet long, was made from a birch tree, and it still has some markings
04:04that prove that it belonged to an ancient hunter.
04:07In the good old days, when it was actively used, the dart had a sharp tip on one end.
04:12The other end had a little dimple that connected to a hook on a special tool called an atlatl.
04:19That atlatl helped the hunter throw the dart much faster and farther than they could just by hand.
04:25Talk about ancient tech.
04:27The scientists who found the dart say that as the ice continues to melt, they keep finding more ancient tools,
04:34plants, and even animal remains in places like Alaska, Canada, and Europe.
04:39They plan to go to Glacier National Park in Montana to work with Native American tribes to find and protect
04:46any more treasures that may have been hidden in the ice for thousands of years.
04:53Paleontologists found something amazing in Antarctica.
04:56The remains of a creature that looked a lot like the Loch Ness Monster.
05:01The animal they found was a plesiosaur.
05:03This marine beauty swam in the ocean during the time of the dinosaurs.
05:08This big guy had four flippers, a long neck, and measured an impressive 36 feet long from its head to
05:15its tail.
05:16That's about as long as a big telephone pole.
05:19This specific type of plesiosaur is the largest one scientists have ever discovered.
05:24It was also very bulky, around 15 tons.
05:29That's about as heavy as two modern elephants.
05:32The fossils of this giant sea creature were first found on Seymour Island in Antarctica back in 1989.
05:39But the plesiosaur was so huge and stuck in such hard rock that it took the scientists three more trips
05:46to get all the fossils out.
05:48In the end, they brought 1,760 pounds of fossilized bones to the lab.
05:55The scientists noticed that some of the vertebrae bones were fused together, which means this plesiosaur was a fully grown
06:02adult.
06:03After studying the fossils, scientists decided it had lived 30,000 years before the mass extinction that wiped out dinos
06:11about 66 million years ago.
06:16In May 1845, Captain John Franklin set off from England with 133 people and two ships.
06:25They were trying to find a sea route called the Northwest Passage to make traveling between Europe and Asia shorter
06:31and faster.
06:32The last people who saw Franklin and his crew were sailors on two whaling ships in August of that same
06:39year.
06:40After that, no one knew what happened to them, and it became a big mystery that lasted almost 170 years.
06:48People sent search teams to the icy parts of northern Canada, where they found some spooky clues.
06:54There were things left behind by Franklin's crew, and they heard sad stories from Inuit people who lived there.
07:00They even found a note from 1847 on King William Island, written by one of the crew members.
07:07The note said the two ships had gotten stuck in the ice.
07:10Finally, in 2014, Canadian scientists announced that they had found the wreck of the Erebus at the bottom of the
07:18Wilmot and Crampton Bay.
07:20Two years later, they found the second ship, about 45 miles away.
07:25Both ships were still in great shape, even after being underwater for so long.
07:30Underwater archaeologists studied the cabins on the ships and brought back hundreds of objects.
07:35Thanks to these artifacts, they can paint a better picture of what really happened during the last days of Franklin's
07:42dangerous journey.
07:45A mountain hiker found an unusual sandal in an area known as the Horse Ice Patch in Norway in the
07:53summer of 2019.
07:54The hiker sent GPS coordinates and photos of the find to researchers who study archaeology preserved within glaciers and ice
08:02patches.
08:02The archaeologists checked the weather forecast and figured out that they only had one day to retrieve the show before
08:10the snow covered it with a thick blanket.
08:13Then, it would take years for it to melt, so they had to act fast and rush to the location
08:19to secure the sandal.
08:20This vintage shoe turned out to be around 1,700 years old after radiocarbon dating.
08:26They also found other artifacts in addition to the Iron Age footwear, such as frozen horse manure from the Viking
08:33Age, and textiles.
08:35All these findings could mean that there used to be a travel route in the mountains that connected inland Norway
08:41to the coast a long time ago.
08:46Welcome to one of the most mysterious and unexplored places on Earth.
08:51Um, but what's so special about that?
08:54It's just some icy peaks and the endless snowy expanse of Antarctica.
08:59Yeah, that's right.
09:00But there's still a planetary scale mystery here.
09:03No matter how hard you try, you won't see a hidden mountain range, giant, unexplored land where no human has
09:10ever set foot, and it lies under another layer of mountains.
09:16It's like a nesting doll, but the size of a continent.
09:19These mountains hide Antarctica secrets, and these secrets can tell us something awesome about the ancient history of our planet.
09:29This gigantic, unexplored territory in Antarctica is called the Gambritsev Subglacial Mountains, and the layer of ice above keeps this
09:39place untouched by nature and people.
09:42It's like a land inside another land, and it hides more than just mountains.
09:47There are valleys, hills, and plains.
09:50The whole area is similar to the European Alps, but unfortunately, we can't enjoy the view.
09:56Those mountains were first discovered in 1958 using seismological instruments.
10:02More than half a century has passed since then, and this place still remains one of the most poorly studied
10:08tectonic objects on Earth.
10:10Why?
10:11Because it's ice.
10:13A lot of ice.
10:15Who knows?
10:16Maybe there are some unknown ancient artifacts lying there.
10:19What if they're hiding a secret city or spaceships?
10:22It's unlikely, of course, but it would still be interesting to look there.
10:27Think about it.
10:28Hundreds or even thousands of miles of land that have remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
10:35Even if no new species of animals or remains of an ancient civilization are there, this place still has a
10:42history.
10:43The history of the formation of continents on our planet.
10:47And scientists have already figured out some of this story.
10:53The mountains buried in Antarctica were originally like ordinary mountains.
10:57But as a result of a planetary scale event, they just...
11:01Wait a minute.
11:02Have you ever wondered how mountain ranges are formed?
11:05We see them in real life.
11:06In movies.
11:08In photos on the internet.
11:09We climb them.
11:10But how did they appear?
11:12Mountains have not always existed on the planet in this form.
11:15They appeared as a result of a large-scale collision of tectonic plates.
11:20Two giant solid chunks of ground are moving toward each other, then crash.
11:25And boom!
11:27Millions of tons of the Earth's crust pile on top of each other, mix, and form ledges and gorges.
11:34And all this can last for millions of years.
11:38Yes, it's a disaster.
11:40But it's very slow.
11:42Some tectonic plates are still colliding.
11:45For example, the Himalayas continue to grow because the Indian and Eurasian plates are still ramming into each other.
11:52And this process began about 50 million years ago.
11:56The Gambertsev Mountains under ice experienced a similar event, only much earlier.
12:01An article in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters says that they appeared during the formation of the supercontinent
12:09Gondwana.
12:11Two giant pieces of land were separated by a boundless ocean.
12:15But then, about 700 million years ago, they collided and formed Gondwana.
12:21This supercontinent included the territories of modern Africa, South America, Australia, India, and Antarctica.
12:29The giant pieces crashed into each other and released a stream of hot, partially molten rock.
12:36This mass grew bigger and bigger, forming mountains.
12:39The temperature of those mountains grew.
12:42Their mass increased.
12:43And at some point, Gondwana became unstable.
12:46The supercontinent began to collapse under its own weight.
12:51The hot rocks below the surface began to flow sideways as a result of a process called gravitational spreading.
12:58Take toothpaste and start squeezing it out of the tube.
13:02Approximately the same thing happened with billions of tons of red hot rock.
13:07Ancient mountains in Antarctica appeared right during this catastrophic event.
13:13You've just watched a visual simulation of global events that took place hundreds of millions of years ago.
13:19It looks cool, but how did scientists figure it out?
13:23How did they see this planetary scale destruction?
13:26If the Gambertsev Mountains under ice is one of the most unexplored places in the world,
13:31then how could people find out its origin?
13:35The answer is simple.
13:37Tiny particles of rock have told us about the changing landscape of the planet.
13:42These are zircons, but scientists also call them time capsules.
13:47This mineral is very handy and resistant to mechanical and chemical influences.
13:52It's difficult to crush.
13:54It doesn't get affected by erosion.
13:56And it doesn't dissolve in water.
13:58And there's uranium inside it.
14:01This chemical element shows scientists the age of the rock.
14:05The fact is that uranium always decays into lead at the same rate.
14:10Scientists look at the ratio of uranium and lead and determine the age of minerals with great accuracy.
14:17Okay, this sounds a bit complicated.
14:20Here's a simple example.
14:21Imagine that each mountain belt is a clock that starts ticking at the moment of its formation.
14:27That is, after the collision of tectonic plates.
14:31After the rock forms, uranium begins its slow decay.
14:35The more time passes, the more uranium turns into lead.
14:39The rate of this decay is always the same.
14:42This decay can last for billions of years.
14:45The less uranium is in zircons and the more lead, the older the rock is.
14:51And this is how it happens in practice.
14:54Geologists take several rock samples.
14:57In a lab, they crush it to extract crystalline zircons.
15:01Geologists then dissolve the particles in acid to separate uranium from lead.
15:06Then, they use a special device, a mass spectrometer that accelerates atoms and sorts them by mass.
15:13This is a rather complicated process, but the bottom line is that this device shows scientists the amount of uranium
15:20and lead.
15:22They look at the ratios of these two elements and calculate the age of the rock.
15:28Geologists took zircons from sandstones near the Gambertsev Mountains, studied those particles,
15:33looked at the level of uranium, and calculated the chronology of mountain formation.
15:39Then, they compared the data obtained with the history of our planet
15:42and realized that the mountains buried in Antarctica appeared during the formation of the supercontinent Gondwana.
15:49But how did they find out that the supercontinent included Australia, India, and Africa?
15:55Zirconia. Zirconia from those Antarctic rocks turned out to be very similar to zirconium from those countries.
16:01That is, a long time ago, these three continents were together.
16:06So, the Gambertsev Mountains began to grow about 650 million years ago.
16:12About 580 million years ago, they reached the height of the Himalayas.
16:17And 80 million years later, they experienced the melting of the Earth's crust.
16:21And while most of the mountain ranges on the planet were changing and collapsing,
16:26the Gambertsev Mountains under ice remained untouched.
16:31Water, soil, wind, earthquakes, gravity, and other natural forces destroy mountain belts.
16:38This process is called erosion.
16:40But mountains buried in Antarctica haven't experienced anything like this.
16:44The cold temperature and the ice sheet around them kept this range unchanged.
16:49It's one of the best-preserved ancient mountain belts on the planet.
16:53Okay, but why do we need to explore these mountains?
16:56What difference does it make that the supercontinent Gondwana collapsed in the past?
17:01It's possible that plants, frozen bodies of insects, or ancient bacteria
17:06have remained preserved under thick layers of ice.
17:09What about ancient animals?
17:11Many species could have lived on Gondwana.
17:15Studying ancient mountains in Antarctica can show us what the planet looked like
17:19about a half a billion years ago.
17:21When Antarctica was a green continent, what lived on it?
17:25What happened to this life?
17:27Is it possible to revive those ancient creatures after so many years?
17:31If scientists were able to calculate the date of the supercontinent's appearance
17:35using tiny particles, then imagine what they could find after examining this hidden mountain range.
17:41It all sounds very interesting.
17:44But there's one problem.
17:46To take a small piece of this unknown world, you need to drill through a lot of ice.
17:51You need to deliver heavy equipment to one of the most inaccessible continents in the world,
17:56build stations, obtain an energy source, and conduct large-scale research.
18:01It sounds incredibly expensive, so this hidden territory will probably remain a mystery for a long time.
18:09Let's just hope that some billionaire will want to find out Antarctica's secrets
18:14and arrange a large-scale expedition there.
18:17Scientists just discovered a lake in Antarctica that flips everything we thought we knew about life on Earth.
18:24They drilled through thick ice and found liquid water where everything should be frozen solid.
18:29And inside this water, there is life.
18:32I mean actual living organisms thriving in the dark, untouched for ages.
18:38The story starts with an expedition that added a new, super-important spot to the Antarctica map.
18:45Between November 2019 and January 2020,
18:48researchers trekking across the frozen desolation reached an area called Enigma Lake.
18:54They thought they were walking over a huge slab of solid ice, but their gear showed something different.
19:00So they used a powerful drill to get through the ice, peered beneath layer after layer,
19:06and detected at least 40 feet of liquid water trapped under the surface.
19:10They came looking for a rock, but found a hidden world under ice in this Antarctica lake,
19:16where they would least expect it.
19:18The scientists were shocked and didn't stop at this discovery.
19:21They wanted to know where all this water came from,
19:25because in this part of Antarctica, the climate is ruthless.
19:29Extreme temperature, low precipitation, punishing winds, and solar evaporation aren't exactly perfect conditions for a lake.
19:36Any freshwater was supposed to have dried up long ago,
19:39so there had to be a source for refills for a subglacial lake in Antarctica like this one.
19:45The researchers looked at the chemical composition of the salts and dissolved materials in the water.
19:50They noticed some patterns that pointed to a source.
19:53It looked like the nearby glacier was feeding the lake via some underground pathway nobody expected to exist.
20:02So there it is, an amazing Antarctica discovery, hidden beneath ice,
20:07fed not from rain or surface melting, but from an underground flow that circles the earth in silence.
20:13And because of that, when the team drilled deeper, they didn't just find water,
20:18they found a secret ecosystem.
20:21Life, where they thought there couldn't be any.
20:23Now by life, here, I don't mean the kind that waves at us.
20:28I mean tiny creatures, tiny structures, microbial communities that evolved in isolation,
20:34shielded by the ice, and pretty restricted to their hidden home.
20:38They cover the lake bed in microbial mats, not just blobs of algae,
20:42but complex, carpet-like mats of microorganisms.
20:46Some mats look like thin, spiky coverings,
20:49others like thick, crumpled carpets, or even tree-like structures up to 15 inches tall.
20:55And these formations, looking straight out of a sci-fi movie about life on distant planets,
21:00aren't random specks of DNA floating in water.
21:02They are thriving, building structures, layering, changing over time.
21:07So the lake bed is kind of like a forest floor,
21:10only it's dark, cold, and covered by ice.
21:13If life can flourish under 45 feet of ice in near darkness,
21:18maybe our ideas of where it can exist need updating.
21:21And we don't know what happens when we disturb this hidden lake ecosystem.
21:26What if we inject humans, machinery, or even our breath into the mix?
21:31These microbes have lived isolated for who knows how many millennia,
21:35maybe even millions of years, without any exposure to the world above.
21:39If humans mess with them, these organisms could be at serious risk
21:44when they meet microbes they had never met before.
21:46The lake could get contaminated, and its ecosystem could change for good.
21:52As we step into this new territory, we must be extra cautious.
21:57After all, the entire Antarctica is like a book of secrets of evolution,
22:01adaptation, and survival that we must read carefully.
22:05This continent keeps surprising us.
22:07Animals that were never seen before turn up in its remote corners,
22:11from bizarre sea creatures to ice-loving insects you didn't know existed.
22:16For example, the ice-loving sea anemone scientists spotted
22:20hanging upside down from the underside of the Ross ice shelf.
22:24It looks like a delicate flower glued to the ceiling,
22:27waving its tentacles into water as cold as a bad breakup.
22:31Researchers steered a robot under the ice and found a brand new species.
22:35Then, there's the celebrity newcomer with serious red carpet energy,
22:40the Antarctic Strawberry Feather Star.
22:43This floating pom-pom can have up to 20 arms.
22:46It got its nickname because the body looks, you guessed it, strawberry-ish.
22:52And oh, I guess Antarctica is the last place where you'd expect to see a fish nursery,
22:57but it has the largest known one in the whole world.
23:00Researchers were there towing their cameras along the Weddell-C seabed to map it
23:05when they spotted thousands, then millions of identical bulls in the sediment.
23:10The nests covered 93 square miles of seafloor,
23:14and there were a total of 60 million of them, one every 10 inches.
23:18All the nests belonged to ice fish.
23:20These creatures are white-blooded, meaning they don't have hemoglobin,
23:25the stuff that makes blood red,
23:27and somehow they still manage to survive in water cold enough to shatter your soul.
23:32Every nest had a parent fish sitting guard over about 1,700 eggs.
23:37Turns out, Weddell seals feast on ice fish.
23:40So this massive breeding ground isn't just a nursery.
23:44It's also a buffet for the neighborhood predators.
23:48And speaking of buffets,
23:50the ice fish themselves feed from a warm upwelling
23:53that pulls out nutrients and microscopic zooplankton.
23:56It's all pretty cool that the ice fish colony has a hard edge,
24:00a literal line in the sand.
24:01The edge of that border matches perfectly with the outer rim of the warm upwelling,
24:06which looks like a carefully crafted evolutionary trick.
24:10Another Antarctica discovery that shocked scientists
24:13wasn't a cool-looking fish or a dinosaur bone.
24:17But something probably even more important for science.
24:20Bubbles
24:21Tiny ancient bubbles trapped inside what might be the oldest ice
24:25ever brought up to daylight, nearly 1.2 million years old.
24:29Before this discovery, researchers had recorded climate history
24:33going back 800,000 years.
24:35But they wanted more.
24:37They spent years searching for the perfect spot
24:40where ice could tell the story straight through.
24:42Some Antarctic regions hold ice even older,
24:45maybe 3 or 4 million years.
24:48But it's patchy, and they needed a continuous record.
24:51When they finally drilled into the right spot,
24:54they found crystal-clear ice cores with bubbles
24:57that trapped the atmosphere of Earth as it was
24:59hundreds of thousands of years ago.
25:01When scientists analyze the air inside,
25:05they're not just studying gases.
25:06They can tell what our distant ancestors inhaled,
25:10what the planet exhaled,
25:11and how the rhythm of life and climate played out long before us.
25:16The period around 900,000 years ago,
25:19the same time sealed inside this ice,
25:21may have been one of humanity's closest calls.
25:24According to genetic studies,
25:26the human population shrank to about 1,300 individuals
25:30on the entire planet.
25:32Nobody knows what exactly led to this,
25:35but it could have been the climate.
25:37So these ancient bubbles might hold the clues we need
25:40to understand how our ancestors survived
25:42one of the toughest chapters in Earth's story.
25:45And maybe how we can survive the next.
25:48Because, you know,
25:49the planet keeps repeating itself in new and uncomfortable ways.
25:53And Antarctica has lessons to teach us.
25:56One lesson we might learn the hard way
25:59has to do with what's under its ice.
26:02Scientists recently found that there's something brewing beneath Antarctica
26:05that's anything but chill.
26:07There might be volcanoes there,
26:10quietly waiting for their moment.
26:12Yeah, you heard it correctly.
26:14Volcanoes, the hot, fiery kind sitting under miles of ice.
26:18The team used computer simulations
26:20and found that when parts of the ice melt,
26:22the pressure holding those volcanoes down eases up.
26:25And boom!
26:26They could start melting even more ice from below.
26:29It's like a self-feeding loop of chaos.
26:32The ice melts, volcano wakes up, then more ice melts.
26:35Even if humans stopped affecting the climate conditions on the planet tomorrow,
26:39that chain reaction could keep going.
26:41Because it's not just about the air.
26:44It's about the fire hiding underneath.
26:46The scariest part is that this kind of melt could raise sea levels way more than we thought.
26:52And since Antarctica has over 70% of all the freshwater reserves on Earth,
26:57you can imagine the drama level it could lead to.
26:59So you see now that Antarctica map is like a real-life board game for humans.
27:04And we must be careful studying and playing it.
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