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Science & Technology

Relics of lost continents found under Antarctica

By T.K. Randall
November 11, 2018 · Comment icon 13 comments

What lies hidden beneath the Antarctic ice ? Image Credit: CC BY-SA 2.0 euphro
Scientists have used satellite data to map out the terrain hidden beneath the ice of the southernmost continent.
The study used data from the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite which precisely measured the pull of Earth's gravity to map out hidden landmasses.

While the satellite mission itself ended in 2013, the data it collected is still proving invaluable.

Antarctica was once part of a much larger supercontinent known as Gondwana which began to break apart sometime around 130 million years ago.
By combining the satellite data with seismological data, scientists have been able to map out hidden geological features in the Earth's lithosphere - the outer shell consisting of the crust and mantle.

This has, in turn, helped to highlight the terrain beneath the ice and how it evolved over time.

"In East Antarctica we see an exciting mosaic of geological features that reveal fundamental similarities and differences between the crust beneath Antarctica and other continents it was joined to," said team member Fausto Ferraccioli from the British Antarctic Survey.

A 3D recreation showing how Antarctica's plate tectonics have changed over the last 200 million years can be viewed below.



Source: Science Alert | Comments (13)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #4 Posted by Coil 5 years ago
Maybe it was only necessary to take into account that our continents are not all continents and it is necessary to take into account the disappeared Atlantis and Lemuria and the remnants of the latter turned into numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean is now in place of Adam and Eva Paradise. Besides, Plato says that the continents generally rising and falling in a matter of hours thousands of feet in different geological periods as a result of volcanic eruptions. So if all of our continents could be folded and compared with the original continent of Rodinia, it will turn o... [More]
Comment icon #5 Posted by third_eye 5 years ago
Plato said he heard that it was said ... Plato didn't say that he saw or he read or even that he believed, he said the story of Atlantis makes for a fine analogy for what he was about to say. Plato said much about many much more relevant things, just as there are many things that they said Plato said but the fact of the matter is Plato says nor sayeth no such things .... ~ mesacc edu link ~
Comment icon #6 Posted by Socks Junior 5 years ago
I'd be surprised if that were the case. Crustal production has increased through time, i.e. we currently have more continental crust than we did 500 Ma, which had more than 1000 Ma and so on and so forth.  There are divergent views from this (see Rowley's work on posited crustal subduction in Tibet), but in general that is the observational evidence.  For a good look at this, see what is currently extant as far as ages of crust go.  You won't see much exposed Archean, etcetera. It all has to do with how continents grow, generally speaking.
Comment icon #7 Posted by Coil 5 years ago
Well, of course, the mass of continental crust is growing. The process of materialization is going on, therefore, an increase in crust is observed, but how did this happen? For me, everything looked like this: when our planet emerged from the Sun, it was a hot clot, a protuberance, and when it began to cool, it first became viscous magma, then it cooled even more, but remained a swirling mass on the surface with numerous volcanoes. After even more cooling, numerous plants appeared on it that released a lot of oxygen into the atmosphere and the planet developed an air-droplet atmosphere (but th... [More]
Comment icon #8 Posted by paperdyer 5 years ago
Wasn't there some evidence that Australia and the west coast of Canada were attached at one time?
Comment icon #9 Posted by paperdyer 5 years ago
So if the Earth is getting smaller, the higher ocean level can't be attributed to melting glaciers alone.
Comment icon #10 Posted by Coil 5 years ago
But the water is more on earth, so it will prevail over the continents in a frozen form or melted. All the same, our land is increasing in mass. This is a growing organism. For example, meteorites are landing on it but there may be other factors for increasing the crust as the ground layers of the soil are layered one above the other, and our planet also becomes more complicated.The magnetic fields inside the planet are overgrown with additional turns, which suggests that our planet is growing mentally as if new gyrus appears in it (the development of the Internet and the wave message, airplan... [More]
Comment icon #11 Posted by aztek 5 years ago
Piri Reis map of Antarctica – Antarctica ice free! http://www.ancientdestructions.com/piri-reis-map-of-antarctica
Comment icon #12 Posted by Essan 5 years ago
Well this thread soon dived deep into woo-woo land ......    And I really have no idea what a map of South America bent to fit the available space has to be with ancient tectonics?   Especially since we all know (or should do if we're posting in a thread like this) that Antarctica currently has less ice cover than for the last 100,000 years (ice extent over land was much greater during the last glacial because sea levels were lower) .  And was last entirely ice free about 40 million years ago ....   And if it were ice free, it'll look like the Piri Re'is map in the same was  VW Beetle ... [More]
Comment icon #13 Posted by aztek 5 years ago
that only means that you have no idea.  


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