7 Finds in Antarctica That Rocked the Scientific World

In 1985, Chilean biologist Dr. Daniel Torres was doing a census of mammals and collecting marine refuse on Cape Sheref in Antarctica. He was going to pick up a big plastic container when he noticed one white rock among the dark volcanic stones. It turned out to be a human skull, and as Dr. Torres found later, it belonged to a young woman who lived in southern Chile. She was most likely in her early 20s and starving when she passed away. Several years later, scientists also found fragments of femurs and used DNA analysis to prove they belonged to the same lady. This discovery could change history as we know it. How did a female skull end up in Antarctica, at a spot where sealers used to camp? Women usually wouldn't go on sealing trips in the early 1800s. To add to the mystery, there was nothing else found at the site. No papers, no special markings, no tools or other objects that could tell us who she was, what happened to her, or how she ended up there. It could mean that people from Chile had a camp here before anyone else set foot on the continent. Scientists made another unique discovery in Antarctica, an ancient meteorite fragment that could be proof there's life on other planets. They believe this meteorite is over 4 billion years old and it might have come straight from Mars. In 1996, NASA scientists announced that they found special chemical marks on the rock. Some ancient Martian organisms may have left them behind, but not everyone was convinced. And later studies found that the carbon-rich chemicals on the rock probably weren't biological at all. Long ago, when Mars was a much wetter place, massive space rocks collided with the planet. These collisions produced intense heat and changed the landscape. The rock found in Antarctica likely survived two such impacts before a third powerful strike hurled it into space. While still on Mars, this rock bathed in water that moved through tiny cracks in its surface. This water probably left behind strange carbon bubbles that scientists thought might be the fingerprints of ancient life. Researchers recover more rocks from space in Antarctica than in any other part of the world. But you don't expect to see a pyramid there, right? I could make you try to solve this mystery, but okay, this object only looks like a pyramid. In fact, it's a mountain. You can easily find it on Google Maps if you scroll all the way to the Ellsworth Mountains. It's the tallest mountain range in Antarctica, and it stretches for almost 250 miles. Explorers from the British Antarctic Expedition first found this unusually shaped mountain and nicknamed it the Pyramid. Over the past 100 years, many people have wondered if there really was a pyramid in Antarctica, and if yes, who built it? But scientists totally reigned on this icy parade as they explained there is nothing unusual about a rocky peak showing above the ice. It's just a coincidence that this one and the neighboring peak are cut in a pyramid shape. Researchers at the University of Colorado found a 10,000-year-old hunting tool near Yellowstone National Park. It was buried in ice, but as it melted because the temperatures got warmer, the tool came to the surface. Researchers were keeping this find a secret for a year. They wanted to get the findings published in a scientific journal before amateur archaeologists would get there and start their own search operations on the site and disturb it. The dart, which is about three feet long, was made from a birch tree, and it still has some markings that prove that it belonged to an ancient hunter. In the good old days when it was actively used, the dart had a sharp tip on one end. The other end had a little dimple that connected to a hook on a special tool called an atlatl. That atlatl helped the hunter throw the dart much faster and farther than they could just by hand. Talk about ancient tech! The scientists who found the dart say that as the ice continues to melt, they keep finding more ancient tools, plants, and even animal remains in places like Alaska, Canada, and Europe. They plan to go to Glacier National Park in Montana to work with Native American tribes to find and protect any more treasures that may have been hidden in the ice for thousands of years. Paleontologists found something amazing in Antarctica, the remains of a creature that looked a lot like the Loch Ness Monster. The animal they found was a plesiosaur. This marine beauty swam in the ocean during the time of the dinosaurs. This big guy had four flippers, a long neck, and measured an impressive 36 feet long from its head to its tail. That's about as long as a big telephone pole! This specific type of plesiosaur is the largest one scientists have ever discovered. It was also very bulky, around 15 tons. That's about as heavy as two modern elephants! The fossils of this giant sea creature were first found on Seymour Island in Antarctica back in 1989. But the plesiosaur was so huge and stuck in such hard rock that it took the scientists three more trips to get all the fossils out. In the end, they brought 1,760 pounds of fossilized bones to the lab. The scientists noticed that some of the vertebrae bones were fused together, which means this plesiosaur was a fully grown adult. After studying the fossils, scientists decided it had lived 30,000 years before the mass extinction that wiped out dinos about 66 million years ago. In May 1845, Captain John Franklin set off from England with 133 people and two ships. They were trying to find a sea route called the Northwest Passage to make traveling between Europe and Asia shorter and faster. The last people who saw Franklin and his crew were sailors on two whaling ships in August of that same year. After that, no one knew what happened to them, and it became a big mystery that lasted almost 170 years. People sent search teams to the icy parts of northern Canada where they found some spooky clues. There were things left behind by Franklin's crew, and they heard sad stories from Inuit people who lived there. They even found a note from 1847 on King William Island written by one of the crew members. The note said the two ships had gotten stuck in the ice. Finally, in 2014, Canadian scientists announced that they had found the wreck of the Erebus at the bottom of the Wilmot and Crampton Bay. Two years later, they found the second ship, about 45 miles away. Both ships were still in great shape, even after being underwater for so long. Underwater archaeologists studied the cabins on the ships and brought back hundreds of objects. Thanks to these artifacts, they can paint a better picture of what really happened during the last days of Franklin's dangerous journey. A mountain hiker found an unusual sandal in an area known as the Horse Ice Patch in Norway in the summer of 2019. The hiker sent GPS coordinates and photos of the find to researchers who study archaeology preserved within glaciers and ice patches. The archaeologists checked the weather forecast and figured out that they only had one day to before the snow covered it with a thick blanket. Then it would take years for it to melt, so they had to act fast and rush to the location to secure the sandal. This vintage shoe turned out to be around 1,700 years old after radiocarbon dating. They also found other artifacts in addition to the Iron Age footwear, such as frozen horse manure from the Viking Age, and textiles. All these findings could mean that there used to be a travel route in the mountains that connected inland Norway to the coast a long time ago. That's it for today. So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!