Evidence of a 900-mile-long river offers a rare glimpse at the land underneath the continent's thick ice sheets.
A river similar in size to the Rio Grande once dominated West Antarctica, scientists have discovered, offering a rare glimpse of the continent's land that is today covered in ice.The 900-mile-long waterway is thought to have flowed about 44 to 34 million years ago, shortly before the continent's immensely thick ice sheets began building up.
The researchers also found traces of organic chemicals associated with freshwater bacteria, further supporting the presence of a large river delta in the region. It stretched between the Transantarctic Mountains and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and drained into the Amundsen Sea, according to the paper in the journal Science Advances.'Our study also shows that West Antarctica was mostly above sea level , but was at the same time pretty flat.
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