Scientists around the world constantly search for clues to piece together Earth’s history, uncovering major milestones along the way. They have already determined that continents formed through plate tectonics and pinpointed the emergence of the first living organisms. Now, a US research team has made a remarkable discovery in Antarctica that could offer valuable new insights.
Antarctica: Ancient Ice and Air Discovered
As they report in their research paper via the scientific journal PNAS, researchers discovered ice and air from the Miocene and Pliocene epochs in the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area. These are periods in Earth’s history, often used to date and describe geological and climatic changes.
The team drilled into the ice to extract samples, which were then analyzed under controlled laboratory conditions. They released the air bubbles trapped inside the ice and measured the composition of gases such as CO₂, O₂, and noble gases. The results revealed that the ice itself dates back to the Miocene epoch, around six million years ago. Meanwhile, the air trapped in the ice cores reflects the atmosphere from approximately 1.5 million years ago, originating from the Pliocene epoch.
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“Climate Snapshots”
The scientists are thrilled with the discovery. “By dating many samples, our team has built up a library of what we call ‘climate snapshots’ roughly six times older than any previously reported ice core data, complementing the more detailed younger data from cores in the interior of Antarctica,” John A. Higgins of Princeton University, who was involved in the research explained (via Sci.news).
This discovery in Antarctica allows research to reconstruct the climate of the distant past more precisely than ever before. The find offers insights into how Earth’s system reacted to natural changes and, consequently, how it might respond to current and future influences.
Sources: “Miocene and Pliocene ice and air from the Allan Hills blue ice area, East Antarctica” (PNAS, 2025), Sci.news
This article was originally published on futurezone.de / 4P.de and has been carefully translated.