Category Archives: ANTARCTICA

600 million-year-old fossils of tiny humanoids found in Antarctica

600 million-year-old fossils of tiny humanoids found in Antarctica

600 million-year-old fossils of tiny humanoids found in Antarctica
600 million-year-old fossils of tiny humanoids found in Antarctica

In the rocky terrain of the Whitmore mountain range of Antarctica, fossilised skeletal remains of what seem to be very small humans have been found.

Tiny fossilized skeletons were found in the Whitmore mountain range

Interestingly enough this finding was made when yours was truly assigned to The National Reporter in Antarctica to debunk a ridiculous tabloid story about the area’s UFO base.

We came across a group of palaeontologists who were looking for evidence that dinosaurs had once roamed the Antarctic continent before it broke loose from Africa and South America and drifted south to its present location while researching this dumb storey with many classmates.

What they found instead astonished them, not only because of what it was but because of its age.

Top; Basecamp with National Reporter tent in the foreground. Bottom; Star reporter Ace Flashman walking with his investigative team.

“We tested the fossils and have determined without a shadow of doubt that they are at least 600 million years old.”

Doctor Marly of Cambridge University told us.  “600 million years ago, jellyfish first appeared. There were no human beings in the world and there wouldn’t be any for for nearly five hundred and 60 million years. There weren’t even any dinosaurs around at that time.”

“The first skeleton we found was hidden within the layers of a large piece of sedimentary rock that we had broken loose from the mountainside.

The first fossilized skeleton they found was less than a foot tall.

We knew that it would most likely  contain some fossils because of its type and age.” Dr.Marly explained.

“When we split the rock apart  we were completely confused.  Here was this fossil from an age when the appearance of the first vertebrates were still millions of years off and it was a complete skeleton. And not only that, it appeared to be human.”

“The second skeleton was a very good specimen, Unlike the first one, the second skeleton was in a fully extended position with excellent detail.” Dr. Marly told us.

The second tiny skeleton was very well-preserved and showed quite a bit of detail.

“It is quite obvious from our study of these skeletons that they are definitely human and not a species of primate.  Who they were and how large their population was and if they were technologically advanced is a complete mystery.”

The fossils have been flown to the National institute of ancient studys in Washington DC  for further analysis.

The National Reporter  will be doing a follow-up report on this amazing discovery within the next few months.

The National Reporter would also like to stress to our readers that these tiny fossilized humanoid skeletons are not the remains of extraterrestrial aliens as we expect the tabloids will be reporting it when the news breaks.

Antarctica pyramids claim the ‘Oldest pyramid on Earth’ is hidden on icy continent

Antarctica pyramids claim the ‘Oldest pyramid on Earth’ is hidden on icy continent

On the History Channel, conspiracy theorists argued that the world’s oldest pyramids are hidden beneath the deep, cold snow of Antarctica. The History Channel’s TV series Ancient Aliens, which explores various extraterrestrial theories, introduced this incredibly bizarre theory.

Ancient Aliens season 11 episode 1 looked into the possibility that such pyramids were left behind by ancient alien visitors or human civilizations.

Conspiracy theory author David Childress told Ancient Aliens there is a distinct possibility the Shackleton Pyramid is the oldest of its kind on Earth.

Antarctica pyramids

He said, “If this gigantic pyramid in Antarctica is an artificial structure, it would probably be the oldest pyramid on the planet, and in fact, it might be the master pyramid that all the other pyramids on planet Earth were designed to look like.”

Another conspiracy theorist agreed, saying: “All the way around the world, we find evidence of pyramid structures.

“We should start looking at the possibility that there was habitation in Antarctica.

“Was it a lost civilization? Could it be ancient astronauts?

“And just maybe, the earliest monuments of our own civilization came from Antarctica.”

However, the theory was challenged by Dr. Michael Salla, author of Exopolitics: Political Implications of the Extraterrestrial Presence.

The alien expert argued the Antarctic pyramid is just one node in a global network of power-generating pyramids strategically placed around Earth.

A popular pyramid conspiracy claims the triangular structures act as power generators of sorts, built for the purpose of transiting vast amounts of energy wirelessly.

Dr. Salla said: “There has been extensive research done on pyramids throughout the world, in terms of their structure and what they really are.

“One of the theories is that pyramids are power generators, and so if you have these pyramids strategically placed around the world generating a charge, it’s possible to create a general standing wave around the world that is a wireless transmission of energy.”

However, not everyone who saw the Ancient Aliens episode was convinced by the wild theories presented.

YouTube user Derrick commented: “Snow-covered pyramid shape in Antarctica, I believe geologists would call that a mountain.” Lazaros Tsakpounidis said, “I feel like I’m losing my brain cells after watching this.”

And Mohammad Ziaul Mustafa Khan said: “No evidence; only a bunch of authors referred to them as extraterrestrial theorists claimed everything on Earth is conspired by some aliens, now the latest victim is Antarctica.

“Maybe geologists must take lessons from so-called experts.” And according to geologists, there is nothing unusual about the angular shape of the mountain.

Dr Mitch Darcy, a geologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, argued mountains like this are known as nunataks. Nunataks are exposed and rocky mountain peaks and rides that are naturally occurring and pyramid-like in shape.

Speaking about a similar “Antarctica pyramid” near the Ellsworth Mountains, the geologist told IFLScience: “The peaks are clearly composed of rock, and it’s a coincidence that this particular peak has that shape.

“It’s not a complicated shape, so it’s not a special coincidence either. “By definition, it is a nunatak, which is simply a peak of rock sticking out above a glacier or an ice sheet. “This one has the shape of a pyramid, but that doesn’t make it a human construction.”

280-Million-Year-Old Fossil Forest Discovered in Antarctica

280-Million-Year-Old Fossil Forest Discovered in Antarctica

Geologists have discovered 280-million-year-old tree fossils in what is believed to be evidence of the oldest polar forest found in Antarctica.

280-Million-Year-Old Fossil Forest Discovered in Antarctica
The polar forest grew at a latitude where plants can’t grow today and scientists are now trying to understand why they went extinct (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee/Screengrab)

Erik Gulbranson and John Isbell from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee trekked across the Transantarctic Mountains during the continent’s summer, between November and January.

They found the ancient ​specimens among the rocks where a leafy forest once grew.

The team have now returned to the frozen slopes once more to find out how the forest could have flourished there.

Professor Gulbranson said people have known about the fossils in Antarctica since around 1910 but most of the region remains unexplored.

The polar forest grew at a latitude where plants can’t grow today and he believed they must have been an extremely hearty species in order to survive. The team is now trying to understand why they went extinct.

“There isn’t anything like that today,” he said. “These trees could turn their growing cycles on and off like a light switch. We know the winter shutoff happened right away, but we don’t know how active they were during the summertime and if they could force themselves into dormancy while it was still light out.”

The trees are believed to have been able to survive by living nearly half the year in absolute darkness followed by up to five months of continuous light.

During the Permian Period, Antarctica was much warmer than it is today. At the time, Antarctica was then still part of Gondwana, the Southern Hemisphere’s supercontinent that incorporated present-day Africa, South America, Arabia, India and Australia.

There would have been a mixture of mosses and ferns and the geologists believe forest stretched across the entirety of Gondwana.

Partial tree trunk with the base preserved, at the site in Svalbard (left) and a reconstruction of what the ancient forest look liked 380 million years ago (right)
Erik Gulbranson on site in Antarctica.
A photograph taken by Captain Scott on his final expedition of Dr Edward Wilson sketching on Beardmore Glacier.

The team of scientists found that these trees were able to transition from summer activity to dormancy during the winter perhaps as quickly as within a month.

In a separate interview with CNN, Prof Gulbranson said that dating the fossils was one of his team’s biggest challenges. He added that recent findings indicated the polar forest was about 280 million years old but that a margin of error could make the trees up to 20 million years older or younger.

This partial trunk fossil was cracked near its base, but two distinct patterns are still visible in the rock: oval leaf bases at the bottom and diamond-shaped leaf bases moving up the trunk toward the top.
280-Million-Year-Old Fossil Forest Discovered in Antarctica
Scientists have since uncovered further evidence of plant life on the continent, including this fossilized fern from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) fossil collection.

The new research aimed to study how such polar ecosystems changed during the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago, he said.

Although research is still ongoing on what caused the mass extinction, many scientists believe 90 per cent of all species were wiped out from the face of the earth, including the polar forest, because of higher global temperatures and ocean acidification caused by an injection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere spanning over 200,000 years.

“This forest is a glimpse of life before the extinction, which can help us understand what caused the event,” Prof Gulbranson said. “It can also give clues to how plants were different than today.”

He added that he believed his work could help understand the effects of contemporary climate change and added that today’s global warming could lead to forests moving towards the North Pole in places like Arctic Siberia and Arctic Canada.

Fossil Hunters Uncover 71-Million-Year-Old Trove in Antarctica

Fossil Hunters Uncover 71-Million-Year-Old Trove in Antarctica

One of the researchers closely studies a particular rock.(Flickr: University of Queensland)

A team of scientists from around the world have uncovered more than a tonne of fossils and dinosaur remains while on an extremely gruelling and frosty expedition to Antarctica. Fossils from the end of the age of dinosaurs, some of which were estimated to be 71 million years old, were discovered including many marine reptile remains.

“[We found] things like plesiosaurs and mosasaurs — a type of marine lizard made famous by the recent film Jurassic World,” said Dr Steve Salisbury from the University of Queensland, who took part in the mission.

“We found a lot of really great fossils,” he said.

An illustration of a plesiosaurs on land by Henrich Harder.(Wikicommons)

“They were all shallow marine rocks, so the majority of things we found lived in the ocean.”

Dr Salisbury and the team also found fossils of birds including early ducks that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period.

The team of 12 scientists from the US, Australia and South Africa travelled to the James Ross Island area to find out more about Antarctica’s dinosaurs.

The researchers scope out a camping spot on Vega Island from their inflatable boat.(Flickr: University of Queensland)

The researchers ventured to the Antarctica Peninsula, as that is one of the few parts of Antarctica where rocks are exposed during summer. Those rocks are known to come from the age of dinosaurs.

They set up quadrats of 50 by 100 metres and slowly made their way through sections of earth looking at every rock.

Dr Salisbury said if their expedition inspired other people to also get into the hunt for fossils, they would be “very excited”.

One of the researchers closely studies a particular rock.(Flickr: University of Queensland)

Helicopters and inflatable boats are all part of a day’s work

The team not only endured extreme temperatures during their work, but were met with many challenges just getting to the region.

They had to fly to South America, then battle seasickness while sailing to the Antarctic Peninsula, before using helicopters and inflatable boats to get through the mass amounts of sea ice to reach shore.

Researcher during the excavation of a plesiosaur.(Flickr: University of Queensland)

It takes between four and five days to cross the Drake Passage to get to the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

“Crossing the Drake Passage can be kind of rough — some of the biggest seas in the world occur in that area — so most of us just bunkered down for the time we were crossing it,” Dr Salisbury said.

Dr Salisbury had made several attempts to get to Antarctica to conduct the research, but sea ice had previously made reaching land impossible.

“It was so great to finally get there and have a full-blown expedition,” he said.

“It’s a very hard place to work, but it’s an even harder place to get to.”

One of the tents used by the researchers during their Antarctic stay.(Flickr: University of Queensland)

The team camped for almost five weeks between February and March on the heavily glaciated Vega Island and had to hike 10 kilometres each day through mountainous terrain to reach their main field site, Sandwich Bluff.

“Working in Antarctica is tough,” Dr Salisbury said.

“There were a few days where we did get snowed in, and we’d just be stuck in the communal tent for a while.”

The fossils found are now in Chile and will be shipped to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History where further study will be undertaken.

“A lot of the bigger bones will need quite a bit of preparation before we can do much research on them,” Dr Salisbury said.

“It may be a year or two before we get the results out.”

The researchers had to walk for four hours per day from their campsite to the main field site at Sandwich Bluff.(Flickr: University of Queensland)

The Discovery of a ‘hidden world’ under Antarctic ice has scientists jumping for joy

The Discovery of a ‘hidden world’ under Antarctic ice has scientists jumping for joy

Researchers discovered swarms of shrimplike amphipods while they were exploring an underground Antarctic river.

A never-before-seen ecosystem lurks in an underground river deep below the icy surface of Antarctica. Researchers recently brought this “hidden world” into the light, revealing a dark and jagged cavern filled with swarms of tiny, shrimplike creatures.    

The scientists found the secret subterranean habitat tucked away beneath the Larsen Ice Shelf — a massive, floating sheet of ice attached to the eastern coast of the Antarctic peninsula that famously birthed the world’s largest iceberg in 2021.

Satellite photos showed an unusual groove in the ice shelf close to where it met with the land, and researchers identified the peculiar feature as a subsurface river, which they described in a statement.

The team drilled down around 1,640 feet (500 meters) below the ice’s surface using a powerful hot-water hose to reach the underground chamber. 

When the researchers sent a camera down through the icy tunnel and into the cavern, hundreds of tiny, blurry flecks in the water obscured the video feed. Initially, the team thought their equipment was faulty.

But after refocusing the camera, they realized that the lens was being swarmed by tiny crustaceans known as amphipods. This caught the team off guard, as they had not expected to find any type of life this far below the icy surface. 

“Having all those animals swimming around our camera means there’s clearly an important ecosystem process happening there,” Craig Stevens, a physical oceanographer at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) in Auckland, New Zealand, said in a statement.

The discovery of the secret shrimp-infested structure had the team “jumping up and down for joy,” Stevens added.

Experts have long suspected that there is a vast network of rivers, lakes and estuaries underneath Antarctica, but until now these features have been poorly studied. It was previously unknown if they harboured life, which makes the new finding even more important.

“Getting to observe and sample this river was like being the first to enter a hidden world,” lead researcher Huw Horgan, a glaciologist at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, told The Guardian.

Horgan first spotted hints of the subsurface structure in 2020 while looking at a satellite photo of the area. It was visible as a long depression, or groove, stretching across the ice — a hallmark of an underground river.

However, despite being prominent in the satellite images, the groove initially eluded surface detection, Stevens said. “But then we found this tiny, gentle slope and guessed we’d got the right spot.”

Researchers drilled more than 1,600 feet under the Larsen Ice Shelf.

After sending the camera down into the river, the team was surprised to learn that the cavern looked drastically different from what they had predicted.

The researchers had expected that the roof of the chamber would be smooth and flat. But instead, they found that the roof was very uneven and had lots of steep undulations.

The cavern was also much wider nearer the roof. “It looked like a loaf of bread, with a bulge at the top and narrow slope at the bottom,” Stevens said. 

The researchers also unexpectedly discovered that the water column underground split into four or five distinct layers of water flowing in opposite directions. “This changes our current understanding and models of these environments,” Stevens said. “We’re going to have our work cut out understanding what this means.”

The underside of the river’s icy roof looked nothing like what the researchers were expecting.

The team arrived above the buried river just in time to make another interesting observation. The researchers set up camp a couple of days before the record-shattering eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in Tonga on Jan. 15.

The massive explosion caused pressure waves that rang Earth’s atmosphere like a bell, and sensors the researchers had placed on the ice’s surface recorded similar pressure waves moving through the underground chamber. “Seeing the effect of the Tongan volcano, which erupted thousands of kilometres away, was quite remarkable,” Stevens said. “It is a reminder about just how connected our whole planet is.” 

The scientists will continue to study the newfound subsurface ecosystem and hope to learn more about how the nutrients in the water are cycled through Antarctica’s underground water networks to support the abundance of life that lives there. 

However, the researchers also worry that even hidden ecosystems like this one may be at risk from rapidly warming temperatures caused by climate change. “The climate is changing, and some key focal points are yet to be understood by science,” Steven said. “But what is clear is that great changes are afoot.”

Hollow Earth: The Forbidden Land Of Agartha And The Thule Secret Society

Hollow Earth: The Forbidden Land Of Agartha And The Thule Secret Society

In 1943, German Navy Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz stated that the German submarine fleet had “built for the Führer an impregnable fortress at the other end of the world,” in the region of Queen Maude’s Land, Antarctica, later renamed Neuschwabenland. According to German naval archives, two months after Germany surrendered to the Allies in April 1945, the German submarine U-530 left the Port of Kiel bound for Antarctica.

Once the submarine arrived at the South Pole, 16 members of its crew were ordered to construct an ice cave in the region of Neuschwabenland. The German U-boat then entered the Argentinean port of Mar-del-Plata and surrendered to authorities.

In August 1945, one month and seven days after the surrender of U-530, U-977 also entered the waters of Mar-del-Plata and surrendered to authorities.

Hollow Earth: The Forbidden Land Of Agartha And The Thule Secret Society

In 1946, Operation Highjump commenced as part of the U.S. Naval Antarctic Developments Project, organized by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. The task force consisted of over 40 ships, including two destroyer class vessels and the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Philippine Sea, and a number of planes that were outfitted with a trimetricon (a secret spying camera), a magnetometer (to record any magnetic anomalies), and the recently developed jet-assist takeoff bottles (JATO) which helped with takeoffs from the short runway on an aircraft carrier or for takeoffs on hard ice. It has been long thought by researchers that the Navy’s mapping story was nothing more than a cover to shield the real operation. They were looking for the underground Nazi base (Base-211) that warehoused German Vril flying discs known as flugscheiben and Thule mercury-powered spaceship prototypes also known as jenseitsflugmaschines.

In 1947, Admiral Richard Byrd said:

“The project was necessary for the USA to take defensive actions against enemy fighters which come from the polar regions.”

Was he referring to potential Soviet aircraft or Nazi Luftwaffe attacking the States from Antarctica?  He never clarified. Shortly after Admiral Byrd’s press conference the Soviet naval journal, Red Fleet, stated that:

“US measures in Antarctica testify that American military circles are seeking to subject the Polar Regions to control and create permanent bases for their armed forces.”

In another odd twist, the governments of New Zealand, Australia and Chile asked for their militaries to join the Operation Highjump expedition but were denied participation. In 1948, a second task force named Operation Windmill was also sent to take photographs of Neuschwabenland, again supposedly for mapping purposes. Although they apparently succeeded in their task, the government has yet to make these photos available to the public and no reason has ever been given for their nondisclosure.

Some believe that the reason the photos have never been released is that this military operation was actually a reconnaissance and recovery mission. In 1949 Secretary of Defense James Forrestal, a close friend of Admiral Byrd, was sent to stay at Bethesda Naval Hospital. He began to discuss Operation Highjump with the hospital staff, talking wildly about UFOs, Atlantis, and an underground Nazi city. He was denied visitors, including his wife, and shortly afterwards “fell” out of his hospital window to his death.

Actual pictures of Vril flying saucers

The official report said that he committed suicide but persistent rumours say that he was murdered by government agents to keep him from talking further about what was really found in the Antarctica wilderness during Operation Highjump. The entire truth of the matter may never come to light, but what is known is that numerous U.S. military personnel surprisingly lost their lives during Operation Highjump; a supposed mapping operation that should have been an entirely safe endeavour. Also, multiple planes were downed during the operation, including the George One which, according to Naval documents, mysteriously “just blew up” over the ice during its initial flight in Antarctica. According to British Intelligence, we know that advanced, stealth foo fighters and Vril flying saucer-shaped craft were developed and tested at the German Institute for Aerial Development.

Another motive associated with Nazi involvement in Antarctica is that it was rumoured to be the entrance to the lost Aryan homeland of Thule. While Antarctica has been linked to the lost continent of Atlantis, the linkage to Thule is less apparent. Thule (also known as Thula, Thyle, Thila, Tila, Tyle, or Tylen, among other cognates) was first written about by the Greek explorer Pytheas after his travels between 330 BC and 320 BC. In 150 AD, Greek writer Antonius Diogenes wrote The Wonders Beyond Thule. While of literary interest, this work did little to reveal any secrets about Thule. In medieval geographies, Thule was referred to an as a distant place located beyond the “borders of the known world.” Occult mystics believe in historical Thule (also referred to as Hyperborea) as the ancient origin of the Aryan race.

Just what was the US military doing in Antarctica in 1946 and 1947? Were they on a routine mapping mission or were they engaging remnant Nazi fighters with advanced alternative technology?

Did the Nazis truly build a military base in the Antarctic or hide vast amounts of gold there in hopes of funding a future effort to resurrect the Fourth Reich? Or did they, as some claim, discover the lost land of Atlantis or Thule?

We may never know for sure, but in 2001 the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Support Office for Aero-geophysical Research confirmed the existence of a magnetic anomaly on the eastside shore of Lake Vostok in Antarctica, consistent with a man-made construct. More recently, in October 2006, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography reported that they discovered several previously unknown lakes of water underneath the vast ice sheet of Antarctica. These lakes lie beneath 2,300 feet of compressed snow and ice. Could this anomaly be part of an underground Nazi base that U.S. agents searched for during Operation Highjump? Something has indeed been discovered in Antarctica. One of the questions that begs to be asked is did the Nazis find, whatever it is, first?

A book published in 1978, called Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions, relates how the Germans had taken a ship with a small airplane on it that they launched from their ship after reaching the ice near Antarctica.

It flew over the ice to Antarctica, presumably on a scouting flight, and then back to the ship. But the book didn’t say anything about what it supposedly found or what the Nazi party elite believed was an entrance to the inner (hollow) earth.

An interesting document has recently surfaced obtained by a Joe Watson of Talkeetna, Alaska.

Mr. Watson claims it is a copy of a letter written on 2 March 1985 in the German language from a German submarine crewman who was on board. In it is given certain coordinates for their mission, which apparently was to travel to the center of the earth.  Their submarine was called U-209 under Captain Heinrich Brodda. The image below is a copy of the original hand-written letter from Karl Unger, crew member of the German U-209, as well as an English translation (click to enlarge).

In it, Karl confirmed that the earth was indeed hollow and that they had successfully reached the inner inhabited earth in the German U-209 submarine after World War II had destroyed Germany.

The letter was sent to his friend here on the surface world who gave a copy of it to a Mr. Woodard, who gave a copy to Joe Watson. Karl had sent the letter from the hollow earth through a German colony in Brazil that had found a cavern that reaches to the hollow earth many years previous. This German colony in Brazil is documented in Genesis For a New Age, having supposedly discovered the cavern entrance back in the 1500’s. When one does a search at the German archive website looking for information on the missing U-209 German submarine, it shows that the submarine was indeed reported missing. 

On July 5, 1943 was it’s last reported position between Greenland and Iceland at coordinates 52°00’N-38°00’W.  The report said the Commander of the submarine was Heinrich Brodda.

In addition, documents obtained by the soviets at the close of WW2 recently surfaced which shows a 1944 map from the Third Reich detailing not only the direct passageway used by German U-boats to access this subterranean domain, but also a complete map of both hemispheres of the inner realm of Agharta, the mythical name of the inhabited subterranean world.

If that seems too unbelievable, compare with those maps, this map done by the famed Tyrolean cartographer and artist Heinrich C. Berann for the National Geographic Society beginning in 1966.

The following map clearly shows the continent of Antarctica without its cover of ice:

The intriguing detail here is that there are underwater passageways that run nearly the entire length of the continent and seem to converge at the exact location identified as the opening into the deep inner or subterranean earth.

Below is a translation of the Top Secret instructions and specific detailed directions left for the Nazi U-boat Captains to follow in order to reach the inner-world kingdom of Agartha.

In his groundbreaking bestseller Map of the Ancient Sea Kings, Charles Hapgood (1904-1982), History Professor at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, first put forth the theory that Atlantis resided in Antarctica and was destroyed by crustal displacement.

In his bestseller, When The Sky Fell: In Search of Atlantis, Rand furthered the idea that under the ice of Antarctica exists the remains of Atlantis. Could they be right?

The Ancient ‘Buache Map’ Is Depicting Ice-Free Antarctica

The Ancient ‘Buache Map’ Is Depicting Ice-Free Antarctica

Numerous maps have been discovered depicting our planet as it was before the last ice age. Many people claim that before written history, extremely advanced ancient civilizations existed on Earth and these ancient cultures, ignored by mainstream history, had well-developed cartography systems comparable in precision to the ones we have today.

No one has been able to explain just how these extremely ancient maps, depicting regions of our planet like Antarctica without ice, dating back thousands of years exist.

Many argue that these maps are the product of Antediluvian civilizations that inhabited our planet thousands of years before written mainstream history.

The Antediluvian period or the Pre-Flood period is referred to as the time ‘before the great deluge’. In the Bible, this time is set between the fall of man and the Noachian deluge, the story of the Flood as described in Genesis.

While most of us are familiar with the Piri Reis map – which has been validated by scholars who remain baffled and cannot explain their precision and level of detail — most of us are unaware that there are numerous other maps that depict the same scenery.

One of those maps is the controversial cartographic chart created by a French geographer the name of Philippe Buache de la Neuville.

The Ancient ‘Buache Map’ Is Depicting Ice-Free Antarctica

The Buache map has two versions. One of the charts is believed to accurately depict the ice-free coastline of Antarctica while the other chart makes no mention of the continent whatsoever.

Many indicate that Buache was unaware of the existence of the Icy Continent and that his depictions were nothing more than a hypothesis.

The 18th-century map is claimed to accurately depict the continent of Antarctica before it was buried by thick layers of Ice.

The only way for the map to correctly portray this is if someone mapped the Antarctic continent when it was free from ice.

Denman Glacier: Deepest point on land found in Antarctica

Denman Glacier: Deepest point on land found in Antarctica

The deepest point on continental Earth has been identified in East Antarctica, under Denman Glacier. This ice-filled canyon reaches 3.5km (11,500ft) below sea level. Only in the ocean are the valleys deeper still. The discovery is illustrated in a new map of the White Continent that reveals the shape of the bedrock under the ice sheet in unprecedented detail.

Its features will be critical to our understanding of how the polar south might change in the future. The new map, called BedMachine Antarctica, shows, for example, previously unrecognised ridges that will impede the retreat of melting glaciers in a warming world; and, alternatively, a number of smooth, sloping terrains that could accelerate withdrawals.

“This is undoubtedly the most accurate portrait yet of what lies beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet,” said Dr Mathieu Morlighem, who’s worked on the project for six years.

Denman Glacier: Deepest point on land found in Antarctica
Denman’s deep trough (dark blue) is 20km wide and 100km long – all filled with ice

At the University of California, Irvine, the researcher is presenting his new compilation here at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting. It is also being published simultaneously in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The map essentially fills all of the gaps in airborne surveys of the continent.

For decades, radar instruments have crisscrossed Antarctica, sending down microwave pulses to peer through the ice and trace the underlying rock topography. But there are still vast areas for which there is little or no data.

Dr Morlighem’s solution has been to use some physics – mass conservation – to plug these holes.

For instance, if it’s known how much ice is entering a narrow valley and how fast it’s moving – the volume of that ice can be worked out, giving an insight into the depth and roughness of the hidden valley floor.

For the 20km-wide Denman Glacier, which flows towards the ocean in Queen Mary Land, this approach reveals the ice to be descending to over 3,500m below sea level.

Byrd Glacier is a giant ice stream that cuts through the Transantarctic Mountains

“The trenches in the oceans are deeper, but this is the deepest canyon on land,” explained Dr Morlighem.

“There have been many attempts to sound the bed of Denman, but every time they flew over the canyon – they couldn’t see it in the radar data.

“The trough is so entrenched that you get side-echoes from the walls of the valley and they make it impossible to detect the reflection from the actual bed of the glacier,” he told BBC News.

For comparison, the deepest ocean point – in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific – goes just shy of 11km below the sea surface. There are land canyons that can be described as having taller sides, such as Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon in China, but their floors are above sea level.

The lowest exposed land on Earth, at the Dead Sea shore, is a mere 413m (1,355ft) below sea level.

Much of what is in BedMachine Antarctica may not – at first glance – look that different from previous bedmaps. But, on closer inspection, there are some fascinating details that will generate considerable discussion among polar experts.

For example, along the Transantarctic Mountains, there is a series of glaciers that cut through from the continent’s eastern plateau and feed into the Ross Sea.

The new data shows a high ridge sits under these glaciers which will limit the speed at which they can drain the plateau. This will be important if future warming destabilises the floating shelf of ice that currently sits on top of the Ross Sea. Removal of this platform would ordinarily be expected to speed up the flow of feeding glaciers.

“If something happened to the Ross Sea Ice Shelf – and right now it’s fine, but if something happened – it will most likely not trigger the collapse of East Antarctica through these ‘gates’. If East Antarctica is threatened, it’s not from the Ross Sea,” Dr Morlighem said.

Airborne instruments are used to map Antarctica, but there are still huge data gaps

In contrast to the situation in the Transantarctic Mountains, BedMachine Antarctica finds few impediments to the rapid retreat of Thwaites Glacier. Roughly the size of the UK, this mighty ice stream terminates in the Amundsen Sea in the west of the continent.

It worries scientists because it sits on a bed that slopes back towards the land – a geometry that tends to assist in thinning and withdrawal. And the new map reveals only two ridges, some 30km and 50km upstream of Thwaites’ current grounding line, that could act as potential brakes. Go past these and the melting glacier’s pull-back could be unstoppable.

BedMachine Antarctica will be fed into climate models that try to project how the continent might evolve as temperatures on Earth rise in the coming centuries.

Getting realistic simulations out of these models depends on having more precise information on the thickness of the ice sheet and the type of terrain over which it must slide.

Co-worker Dr Emma Smith from Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute uses this analogy: “Imagine if you poured a bunch of treacle onto a flat surface and watched how it flowed outwards. Then pour the same treacle onto a surface with a lot of lumps and bumps, different slopes and ridges – the way the treacle would spread out would be very different. And it’s exactly the same with the ice on Antarctica,” she told BBC News.