Ice-Buried Mountains, Questions Solved by Ancient Rocks
The Gamburtsev subglacial mountains have been buried under ice for 14 million years.
The history of the stone and the mountains covered by the East Antarctica ice sheet, unexplored and unaccessible, have been revealed by the discovery of a set of ancient rocks, in a report by Nature. Scientists barely had an understanding of the rocks covered by the world’s largest ice sheet for the past 14 million years.
Paul Fitzgerald, an Earth and environmental sciences professor at Syracuse University, said that “These mountains are much more remote than Mount Everest or the deepest part of the ocean.”
However, several of the tectonic puzzles have now been solved, due to rock samples and radiometric dating.
Fitzgerald and his friend John Goodge, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth, found granite boulders ranging between 1 to 2 million years old. Rocks of this age were not found anywhere else in Antarctica, and they knew that these rocks must have originated deep within the ice sheet and the mysterious Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains underneath.
These mountains have long been covered by ice, and researchers have been unable to figure out the types of rocks that are in the mountains.
When mountains are formed, they are pushed up, creating high topography. When the mountains are slowly eroded, rocks are exposed, cooling them. Geologists measure the cooling of these rocks in a modern dating method called thermochronology, allowing them to measure the temperature histories of the rocks.
Their findings found that there had been three periods of rapid cooling caused by tectonic processes that had taken place in East Antarctica.
- 500 million years ago, two continents collided to form the supercontinent Gondwana.
- 180 million years ago, the supercontinent Gondwana split up.
- 100 million years ago, a fissure system of cracks and crevasses caused a plateau to collapse.
These conclusions make geological sense when studied. However, there are still many mysteries hidden beneath the ice of Antarctica, and we know that science is always evolving.
However, to Fitzgerald, the best part is the excitement of discovery. “We were sampling a place that we knew very little about. For us, this was like having rocks to study from the moon or Mars,” he said.
Related Articles
https://interestingengineering.com/science/ice-buried-mountains-solved-ancient-rocks
https://phys.org/news/2011-11-gamburtsev-subglacial-mountains-enigma-unraveled.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33791-y
https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/15/2/306
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-glacial-reveal-geology-hidden-beneath.html
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