(ORDO NEWS) — It has always been believed that the icing of Antarctica began about 45.5 million years ago, and the mainland was completely covered with ice 34 million years ago. It turned out it wasn’t.
Scientists from the University of Aberdeen conducted a study according to which the ice formed much earlier – 60 million years ago (the boundary of the Cretaceous and Paleogene period). This is the time when all dinosaurs became extinct.
The average temperature of the Earth in that era was 20 ° C higher than the current one, but the mainland of Antarctica was already approaching the south pole of the planet, which allowed ice to form.
The discovery came when scientists were investigating glaciation in the Transantarctic Mountains. This is a 3500 km mountain range that stretches across Antarctica but is largely buried under the ice.
Before announcing a different age of the ice, experts studied hundreds of satellite images and analyzed tens of thousands of glacial landforms known as glacial cirques. The study is published in the journal Nature.
What awaits us in the future:
Scientists told what will happen to the Earth in 200 million years. Engineers simulated the movement of tectonic plates using a supercomputer and accelerated it thousands of times.
It turned out that all the continents will unite into one supercontinent. They even gave him a name.
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