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I wonder what fossil treasures are sitting beneath the ice in Antarctica. Most people don't realize how massive the continent is since it doesn't show up fully

I wonder what fossil treasures are sitting beneath the ice in Antarctica. Most people don't realize how massive the continent is since it doesn't show up fully on maps - it is nearly 1.5 times the size of America. If it was a wetter, warmer place millions of years ago, it would have been teeming with life.

arunix 7y ago
Bear in mind that underneath the ice, Antarctica is an archipelago, not a continuous land mass. https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/18757/what-would-an-antarctica-without-ice-look-like-compared-to-other-continents https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/18757/what...
- lmilcin 7y ago
  My understand is this is largely because the land mass was pressed down by kilometers of ice. With the ice gone we can expect it to spring up very quickly same way Scandinavia did and is to some extent still doing today. I have no idea how much can be expected to come up but my very quick and inaccurate estimation would be something like 1/8th to 1/5th of the ice thickness pressing it down.
  - LeifCarrotson 7y ago
    If the land mass springs up, does somewhere (everywhere?) else on the planet drift down to make up for the change in volume?
    - oblongx 7y ago
      Indeed. It's one of the Atlantis theories. Idea is that as North American ice disappeared the land lifted up, Atlantis was on the other end of that plate and went down into the sea respectively. Randall Carlson has some interesting theories.
  - sliken 7y ago
    Keep in mind that "spring up very quickly" to a geologist is on the order of inches per year. There are several places currently where glaciers have melted and are experience uplifts on the order of inches a year.
gd1 7y ago
Righto mate, i'm reliably informed that 800ppm+ co2 will be the end of life on earth so that can't be
ad404b8a372f2b9 7y ago
Just to clarify because it was unclear to me and areas are unintuitive with map projections, it's 1.5 times the size of the United States. The U.S is ~10 million km^2, Antarctica 14 million km^2, and the American continent 42 million km^2
- rozularen 7y ago
  That lil obsession you all have of calling usa America
  - samatman 7y ago
    How strange that, of all 35 sovereign nations in the Americas, it's the citizens of the only one to have "America" in its name that call their country America! It must be an obsession, because it couldn't be the desire to carve five syllables off our nine-syllable mouthful of a legal name. I mean. I guess we could just call ourselves the Union, for short. Or the States, something like that. But definitely not all three. That would just be silly.
  - happytoexplain 7y ago
    You're really stretching with the word "obsession", not to mention being inflammatory. It's an abbreviation that happens to lose specificity (as you might expect of an abbreviation - therefore, one must depend on context). In addition, it's a gonna globally common abbreviation. I'm sure the relative commonness of "the US" is higher outside the US, but many people outside the US still call it America too.
- gerland 7y ago
  Which makes a great point about how big Canada is compared to the US. We seem to misuse the term "America" to point only to one part of one of the Americas. Maybe it would be actually less confusing if we would refer to North America as the Canada continent? It would reduce the name conflicts by half and we would use as proxy the biggest country on the continent. There would also be the additional benefit of people not refering to Texas as "South America".
timClicks 7y ago
Life would have also been much different, because it still would have needed to survive for months without sun.
- deleted 7y ago
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- mytailorisrich 7y ago
  Iirc, there are fossils of polar dinosaurs with very big eyes, a bit like deep sea creatures tend to have big eyes.
  - agapon 7y ago
    This sounds interesting, so I googled it. One of the finds: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-lives-of-polar-dinosaurs-180347471/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-lives-of-...
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> I wonder what fossil treasures are sitting beneath the ice in Antarctica. It's well understood that the arctic and antarctic has tons of oil. The arctic by itself is thought to have 22% of the world's oil/gas. "The United States Geological Survey estimates that 22 percent of the world's oil and natural gas could be located beneath the Arctic" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_of_the_Arctic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_of_the_Arcti... But antarctica is more remote than the arctic and has extremely harsh weather/terrain/etc so it will probably be the last place exploited for resources. I doubt there will be mining or drilling for oil in antarctica anytime soon, if ever. The arctic is a different matter altogether.
- INTPenis 7y ago
  Why are people downvoting this? It's the real danger of finding a rain forrest beneath antarctica. Of course the oil companies already know about it. Maybe we're too cynical but money runs the world and money will eventually bypass all environmental protections and start drilling antarctica unless we switch to more reusable energy before that.
  - vsareto 7y ago
    Oil in Antarctica won't happen because of the price of running and shipping things down there. It's way different than finding a new oilfield in a country with roads and an established supply chain. I don't even think you could build pipelines that go from fields to a shipping port because of the snow and ice.
lazyjones 7y ago
It's still teeming with life. Antarctica has more than 400 known subglacial lakes, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok
Jack_Knowles 7y ago
That is an interesting thought and one can only imagine the possibilities. It could alter a lot of what we know already.

arunix 7y ago

Bear in mind that underneath the ice, Antarctica is an archipelago, not a continuous land mass. https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/18757/what-would-an-antarctica-without-ice-look-like-compared-to-other-continents https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/18757/what...

lmilcin 7y ago
My understand is this is largely because the land mass was pressed down by kilometers of ice. With the ice gone we can expect it to spring up very quickly same way Scandinavia did and is to some extent still doing today. I have no idea how much can be expected to come up but my very quick and inaccurate estimation would be something like 1/8th to 1/5th of the ice thickness pressing it down.
- LeifCarrotson 7y ago
  If the land mass springs up, does somewhere (everywhere?) else on the planet drift down to make up for the change in volume?
  - oblongx 7y ago
    Indeed. It's one of the Atlantis theories. Idea is that as North American ice disappeared the land lifted up, Atlantis was on the other end of that plate and went down into the sea respectively. Randall Carlson has some interesting theories.
- sliken 7y ago
  Keep in mind that "spring up very quickly" to a geologist is on the order of inches per year. There are several places currently where glaciers have melted and are experience uplifts on the order of inches a year.

gd1 7y ago

Righto mate, i'm reliably informed that 800ppm+ co2 will be the end of life on earth so that can't be

ad404b8a372f2b9 7y ago

Just to clarify because it was unclear to me and areas are unintuitive with map projections, it's 1.5 times the size of the United States. The U.S is ~10 million km^2, Antarctica 14 million km^2, and the American continent 42 million km^2

rozularen 7y ago
That lil obsession you all have of calling usa America
- samatman 7y ago
  How strange that, of all 35 sovereign nations in the Americas, it's the citizens of the only one to have "America" in its name that call their country America! It must be an obsession, because it couldn't be the desire to carve five syllables off our nine-syllable mouthful of a legal name. I mean. I guess we could just call ourselves the Union, for short. Or the States, something like that. But definitely not all three. That would just be silly.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  You're really stretching with the word "obsession", not to mention being inflammatory. It's an abbreviation that happens to lose specificity (as you might expect of an abbreviation - therefore, one must depend on context). In addition, it's a gonna globally common abbreviation. I'm sure the relative commonness of "the US" is higher outside the US, but many people outside the US still call it America too.
gerland 7y ago
Which makes a great point about how big Canada is compared to the US. We seem to misuse the term "America" to point only to one part of one of the Americas. Maybe it would be actually less confusing if we would refer to North America as the Canada continent? It would reduce the name conflicts by half and we would use as proxy the biggest country on the continent. There would also be the additional benefit of people not refering to Texas as "South America".

timClicks 7y ago

Life would have also been much different, because it still would have needed to survive for months without sun.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mytailorisrich 7y ago
Iirc, there are fossils of polar dinosaurs with very big eyes, a bit like deep sea creatures tend to have big eyes.
- agapon 7y ago
  This sounds interesting, so I googled it. One of the finds: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-lives-of-polar-dinosaurs-180347471/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-lives-of-...

dntbnmpls 7y ago

> I wonder what fossil treasures are sitting beneath the ice in Antarctica. It's well understood that the arctic and antarctic has tons of oil. The arctic by itself is thought to have 22% of the world's oil/gas. "The United States Geological Survey estimates that 22 percent of the world's oil and natural gas could be located beneath the Arctic" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_of_the_Arctic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_resources_of_the_Arcti... But antarctica is more remote than the arctic and has extremely harsh weather/terrain/etc so it will probably be the last place exploited for resources. I doubt there will be mining or drilling for oil in antarctica anytime soon, if ever. The arctic is a different matter altogether.

INTPenis 7y ago
Why are people downvoting this? It's the real danger of finding a rain forrest beneath antarctica. Of course the oil companies already know about it. Maybe we're too cynical but money runs the world and money will eventually bypass all environmental protections and start drilling antarctica unless we switch to more reusable energy before that.
- vsareto 7y ago
  Oil in Antarctica won't happen because of the price of running and shipping things down there. It's way different than finding a new oilfield in a country with roads and an established supply chain. I don't even think you could build pipelines that go from fields to a shipping port because of the snow and ice.

lazyjones 7y ago

It's still teeming with life. Antarctica has more than 400 known subglacial lakes, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Vostok

Jack_Knowles 7y ago

That is an interesting thought and one can only imagine the possibilities. It could alter a lot of what we know already.