{"id":862545,"date":"2026-09-27T15:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T15:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/862545\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T15:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T15:08:17","slug":"scientists-say-theyve-found-remnants-of-huge-life-giving-continent-beneath-antarctica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/862545\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Say They&#8217;ve Found Remnants of Huge Life-Giving Continent Beneath Antarctica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\tSign up to see the future, today<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-paragraph skip\">Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph pw-incontent-excluded article-paragraph skip\">In a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/abs\/pii\/S0012821X22000279?dgcid=author\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2022 study<\/a>, scientists suggested that there could be enormous mountain ranges \u2014 on the scale of the Himalayas \u2014 formed roughly half a billion years ago as the supercontinent Gondwana formed in the Earth\u2019s southern hemisphere. The giant mass once made up modern-day Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, the Indian subcontinent, and more.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Researchers proposed that the supercontinent may have helped kickstart life on Earth by affecting global dynamics, including the climate and related biological processes, a case <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aeh6155\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">explored in detail in a new paper<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Now, as detailed in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S0012821X26005108?via%3Dihub\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">separate study<\/a> published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, two geologists from Australian National University say they\u2019ve found evidence of fragments of this supercontinent lurking deep beneath Antarctica\u2019s ice shell \u2014 a discovery that could have major implications for how we understand the proliferation of life many millions of years ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Finding evidence of an enormous supercontinent isn\u2019t as straightforward as it sounds. Many of Gondwana\u2019s mountain ranges have likely eroded over the last 500 million years or so. But by searching for zircons \u2014 natural minerals that contain trace amounts of uranium and thorium, which allow scientists to date them \u2014 the team created a map of the rough outlines of Gondwana underneath Antarctica.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">Instead of probing the continent\u2019s thick ice shell, the researchers analyzed zircons found in ocean sediments. The data suggests that Antarctica held plenty of material during the formation of Gondwana between 650 and 450 million years ago. That\u2019s around the time of the Cambrian explosion, or the start of the rapid evolution of life on Earth as traced in fossil records.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">The implication: Antarctica may be hiding many of the remnants of Himalaya-scale mountains that once allowed life to flourish underneath its deep coat of ice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">It may have played a major role, the latest study suggests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">\u201cApproximately 46 percent of the detrital zircons in the weighted global database, during the critical period from the base of the Cambrian to the end of the Cambrian explosion, and 55 percent of the high-pressure grains, were derived from Antarctica,\u201d the researchers concluded in their paper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph article-paragraph skip\">More on Gondwana: <a href=\"https:\/\/futurism.com\/the-byte\/scientists-lost-continent-australia\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Scientists Rediscover Lost Continent That Broke Off From Australia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up to see the future, today Can\u2019t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech In&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":862546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-862545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}