Paradise lost in Antarctica discovered.

A few days ago, research published in the scientific journal Nature revealed something surprising, something hidden on that continent. The research was published on October 24. It is carried out by a team of scientists from the United States and the University of Durham in the United Kingdom. . United and have discovered a multi-faceted landscape of hills and ancient river valleys that has remained frozen in time under the thick ice sheet of Antarctica.

It has been there for approximately 14 to 34 million years, researchers analyzed an area of more than 32,000 square km thanks to images from the RadarsAT satellite, capable of scanning the Earth's surface.

Antarctica hides a landscape about which we hardly know anything, we know the surface of Mars better than the ancient continent under the ice, in ancient times there were large rivers in Antarctica, as large and long as the Seine River and now only this one remains. The Onyx River, a stream of snowwater that flows west of the Wright Valley to Lake Vanda, is about 32 km long and only exists during a few months of the Antarctic summer.

There are other summer torrents, but this is the only one that can be called even temporarily a river, all the others have been buried under the ice, the average thickness of the ice layer is about 2500 m although the record is 4776 m on Delia land, if that thickness of ice were over Western Europe it would cover everything.

Imagine walking on an icy plain and having cities like Paris, London or Madrid completely frozen at more than 4000 m under your feet, because something similar happens in Antarctica, under the icy plains thousands of meters deep there are ancient valleys, river beds , beaches, lakes, entire mountain chains and remains of ancient forests, because Antarctica was not always a frozen continent, 52 million years ago Antarctica was much warmer, back then there were no dinosaurs but there were large mammals that lived in dense palm forests and tree species similar to baobabs.

With the movement of the continent towards the south the climate became increasingly colder, about 37 million years ago the snow began to cover the mountains and the first large glaciers emerged, even so during a period of several million years Antarctica was A place with an acceptable climate for terrestrial animals would be an environment and landscape similar to what we would find right now in northern Europe or North America or on the southern island of New Zealand, it was a continent of forests with mountains similar to the alps or the andes.

The problem, the beginning of the end, came when Antarctica finished separating from South America and the Sea of Hoces opened, which is the Marine Pass that separates Antarctica from South America. This event could have occurred between 30 to 20 million years ago. of years, it was then that the circumpolar current was created that formed a gigantic cold trap, the Marine current was cold and formed a circle that closed the way to the warm currents, it is a true Barrier, the result was that Antarctica was gone Getting colder and colder, the Winter snows fell but did not melt when summer arrived and layer after layer created the gigantic ice cap that we see today.

The first region to freeze was East Antarctica, the area where the ancient river valleys that are in the news now have been found, and the last was the Antarctic Peninsula, where it is believed that the last Antarctic forest existed about 3 and a half million years ago. Currently the continent has an area of 14 million square km but only about 280,000 square km are free of ice during the southern summer, this is in the Islands and coastal areas, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula.

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