Message #9593

[Trevor Proffitt]

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Hidden Antarctica: Terra incognita
29 November 2006
Gabrielle Walker
Magazine issue 2580
Deep under the ice continent is a world no one expected.

Seen from the outside, Antarctica is a desert, frozen and all but lifeless. Dig below the surface, however, and you will find deep secrets. Thousands of metres beneath Antarctica's forbidding facade, at the place where ice meets rock, lies a land that is exotic, dynamic and above all, wet. Water courses around Antarctica's soft underside; it collects in deep, dark lakes, spills out into streams and rivers, and forms wetlands and marshes that have not seen the sun for millions of years.

"Antarctica has two faces," says geologist Robin Bell from Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "It has the face it shows to the world and it has the one on the inside. And the inside face could be the one that really matters."

Where there is water, there is also ...