Scientists just excavated an unprecedented specimen from Antarctica

In an extremely remote Antarctic outpost, scientists have discovered a pristine display of our planet’s history.

It is an ice core 2,800 meters, or about 1.7 miles, long. But it is not only the length that is so significant. The ice contains preserved bags of Earththe air of some 1.2 million years ago, if not more. Previous ice cores provide direct evidence of our planet’s climate and environment from 800,000 years ago.

So, this is a giant leap. The team drilled so deep that they reached the bedrock of the continent.

“We have marked a historic moment for climate and environmental science,” Carlo Barbante, a polar scientist and coordinator of the ice core campaign called “Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice,” said in a statement.

An international group of researchers excavated the ice at Little Dome C Field Camp in Antarcticalocated at 10,607 feet (3,233 meters) above sea level. They had radar underground and used a computer model of the ice flow to determine where this ancient ice was likely to be. And they were right.

This was no easy feat. On top of the Antarctic plateau, summer averages minus-35 degrees Celsius, or minus-31 degrees Fahrenheit.

The location of the Little Dome C research base in Antarctica.
Credit: Beyond EPICA / EU

Ice core drilled from the recent Beyond EPICA – the oldest ice expedition.
Credit: Scoto © PNRA / IPEV

Although paleoclimatologists, who have investigated the Earth’s past climate, have reliable methods to indirectly assess our the deep past of the planet – with proxies such as fossilized shells and compounds produced by algae – direct evidence, via direct air, is scientifically invaluable. For example, past ice cores have revealed that carbon dioxide levels of heat in the Earth’s atmosphere have today. he knew – are the highest they have been in about 800,000 years. Is it indisputable evidence of the Earth’s past.

Scientists expect this even older ice core, however, will reveal secrets about a period called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, which lasted about 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago. Mysteriously, the intervals between glacial cycles—where ice sheets spread over most continents and then retreated—slowed markedly, from 41,000 years to 100,000 years.

“The reasons for this change remain one of the enduring mysteries of climate science, which this project aims to unravel,” the drilling campaign, which was coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council d Italy said in a statement.

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Now, the drilling is finished. But the campaign to safely transport the ice back to the laboratories, and then scrutinize this atmosphere of more than millions of years, has begun.

“The precious ice cores extracted during this campaign will be transported to Europe on board the icebreaker Laura Bassi, maintaining the cold chain minus-50 degrees Celsius, a significant challenge for the logistics of the project”, explains Gianluca Bianchi Fasani , the leader. of ENEA logistics (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) for the Beyond EPICA shipment.

These historic ice cores travel in “specialized cold containers” as they ship around the globe, far from the depths of their Antarctic home.