Antarctica’s “Ghost Alps” Revealed: The 500-Million-Year Secret Beneath the Ice

Antarctica, for so long an enigma, has now yielded one of its most surprising secrets: a giant mountain range, the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, buried under kilometers of ice, has at last yielded its ancient origins.

Highlights:

The Gamburtsev Mountains, buried deep beneath East Antarctica's ice, are as big and unforgiving as the European Alps, but completely hidden from view.

Initially detected by Soviet scientists in 1958 with seismic technology, these "ghost mountains" have been one of Earth's most baffling geological mysteries for decades.

New research published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters follows their origin back more than 500 million years to the spectacular collision of ancient continents that created the supercontinent Gondwana.

In contrast with contemporary ranges such as the Himalayas, where the process of uplift continues with ongoing tectonic collisions, the Gamburtsev range developed during an era of significant geological disturbance and then was overburdened and protected by thick Antarctic ice.

Researchers employed the zircon crystals-nature's time capsules-contained within sandstones several hundred kilometers away from the mountains to build the history of the mountains, which turned out to have once risen to Himalayan elevations before sagging partly under their weight by gravitational spreading.

The mountains' crustal "root" thick as it is still rooted in the Earth mantle, which accounts for the fact that this ancient range has endured, unscathed, for half a billion years.

Preservation of the Gamburtsev Mountains provides a unique window into the planet's tectonic past and the processes that shaped the world's continents.

Antarctica's icy veil continues to conceal more secrets, but with each new find, we inch closer to unlocking the deep-time secrets hidden beneath the world's coldest continent.

Sources: The Conversation, The Debrief, Daily Galaxy