Antarctica is larger than the USA and Mexico combined and yet we still know next to nothing about what's hidden behind its menacing ice walls so what's actually lurking down near the South Pole well Gold spurting volcanoes human skulls and blood flowing waterfalls for starters folks dress warm because we're about to find out even more bones it might seem like Antarctica is nothing but ice ice and up did we mention ice but if we rewind the clock back to 71 million years ago lifeless flourishing there is no polar icecaps it was far warmer than it is
now and Antarctica was reminiscent of a prehistoric Jurassic Park with dinosaurs strolling around alongside a range of other animals how do we know this well back in 2016 a team of researchers stumbled across a huge finding on James Ross island which is right about here now it wasn't pieces of the Titanic because that actually sank in the North Atlantic on the other side of the world it was in fact a ton of preserved bones these bones now considered fossils were analyzed and declared to be anywhere between 71 and 67 million years old most of them
were related to ancient duck like creatures but don't you worry of course there were dinosaur bones to remember the Mosasaurus from Jurassic world well yeah they found evidence of that old beast floating around a human skull jump in the time machine skip back a few decades further and scientists actually discovered something even more intriguing a human skull yep back in 1985 researchers came across a human head which was thought to have been from the early 1820s making it one of if not the first landing in Antarctica we say landing because it supposedly belonged to an
indigenous woman from southern Chile and was found right about here Yamata beach at Cape sheriff on the South Shetland Islands so you get the idea Antarctica isn't just ice and penguins it's a bone riddled graveyard as well mountains under the ice we're well aware of the immense amount of ice that covers Antarctica these days right the continent boasts around 90% of the planets freshwater ice with a 99% of the landmass being made up from two enormous three mile thick sheets of the stuff all up crossing roughly 5.4 million square miles that's like the contiguous United
States three million 119,000 sorry Hawaii in Alaska not this time plus Argentina 1,100,000 Kazakhstan 1 million and France two hundred ten thousand 26 all rolled into one with a landmass that enormous you're probably thinking that there must be more to the story and you're right there is amazingly there's actually loads more to find including a mountain range but we're not talking about the Transantarctic mountains or Mount Erebus we're talking about the gambits of mountain range which is ready for it sneakily hidden away underneath the ice scientists actually discovered it back in 1958 when suddenly found
themselves on thin ice within an area where it was supposed to be miles thick that the peaks below were discovered to be 9,000 feet high and close to 750 miles in width whoever thought that an entire Mountain would be good at hide-and-seek huh crystal spewing volcano you know what else is hiding behind that intimidating Antarctic ice wall a volcano that spurts of crystals whenever it darn well feels like it that's right Mount Erebus which is the second highest volcano in Antarctica and the southernmost active volcano on earth actually shoots out crystals from its central vent
and has been doing so since way back in the 1970s these little crystals are called in North oklet's and look like this but they're not the only magic happening at this mysterious mountain American geologists have also found tiny crystals of metallic gold and nearby snow measuring up to 0.02 millimeters so like teeny tiny sadly though it's not enough to make us stinking rich any time soon the mountain only spurts about 80 grams of gold a day and considering that it covers a huge area with a peak of 3,700 94 meters good luck finding those microscopic
specks but how is this even possible well Mount Erebus being you know a fiery volcano creates lava it's also one of the three permanent lakes of molten lava in the war that hot as heck lava amid searing gas and one of the elements in that gas is gold hallelujah when that gas makes contact with the icy air the temperature of the gas drops cooling from over 1,000 Celsius to under 100 Celsius creating tiny solids this entire process happens within a couple meters of the lava pool right speaking of gold want to know how much yours
could be worth in the future check this out then the blood-red waterfall waterfalls are generally clear correct sometimes they can be a little brown if the water is muddy or white if the water is crashing hard but you know what they're usually not red waterfalls are not red ha well actually that's wrong in reality behind that ominous Antarctic wall of ice they are say hello to the appropriately named blood falls over at Taylor glacier located right about here take one look at that color and it's ominous bubbling and you'll understand how it got its name
but what's the deal surely this isn't the aftermath of a gladiator battle or a massacre on ice thankfully there's nothing menacing going on over here the color is totally natural scientists initially thought that it was due to a collection of red algae from though because that sense been disproven after knocking their heads together and scanning the area beneath the falls researchers finally figured out that it was all thanks to a network of rivers and a glacier down under the ice surface all of which had flowing water that was abnormally high in iron it was the
iron that caused the reddish tint hold on a second how can there be a flowing waterfall when the temperatures down there colder than my ex-girlfriends hard but well it's because those underground waters have a composition that includes a high level of salt water which by the way has a much lower freezing point compared to regular water so the high salt level combined with the iron is the reason why the blood falls don't freeze despite it being well below freezing temperatures at a mere 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit around negative 17 Celsius striped icebergs moving on most of
the time the iceberg down in Antarctica are either snow capped in white or have a clear turquoise color reflect the water in sky but that makes plenty of sense you know it doesn't though green icebergs and black icebergs and royal blue icebergs yeah weird isn't it well they exist in incredibly they're actually rather common down near the South Pole these colors aren't just solid blocks of ice that looked like they've been mixed with some home brand food dye nope the colors usually appear in striped patterns it might seem crazy but it's actually true and there's
a very simple explanation for it it's all due to the particular elements that were present in the water when they froze frozen water with algae becomes green grows and meltwater becomes blue and frozen water lined with the various sediments usually becomes black have you ever found a fly frozen in your ice cube tray similar concept to ATMs coming in way out of left field let's give a quick shout out to the two solitaire ATMs living in solitude down in Antarctica over at the McMurdo Station which is the largest scientific Basin across the entire region there
is actually a shred of civilization wait how it sounds nuts but where do you think the researchers hang out when they're not climbing up Mount Erebus or playing tag with the Penguins McMurdo is home to some coffee shops a general store a post office and a few other bits and pieces and what do you need to buy things at these stores money since 1998 that pair of Wells Fargo ATMs have been the only means of withdrawing cash people might not venture down into Antarctica's icy abyss very often however that doesn't mean that it's a lifeless
desert wait desert yeah you heard us right it might not have the sands of the Sahara man you wouldn't think a place largely covered in snow and ice would be dry but huzzah that's the case with Antarctica it's actually the try ass play Sun planet earth officially classified as a cold desert anyway where were we oh yeah life in the desert there are a number of endemic animals crawling swimming skating and hopping around the area some of which are cuddly and some of which are creepy and vicious all mostly hidden beyond the ice wall animals
first off we've got the strange potentially scary yet definitely ugly sea pigs these so-called slugs of the sea have often been called the ugliest creature beneath the waves and it's not hard to see why then we've got our sea spiders these little critters can actually be found in other locations around the world however they're generally at sea Betsy growing up to a mere one millimeter in size in the Antarctic however things have taken a nightmarish turn Mother Nature has really outdone herself this time creating a concept called polar gigantism which effectively turns these teeny tiny
sea spiders into pants wedding shriek inducing Sea Devils growing enormous ly to have a leg span of ten inches or 25 centimeters no thank you far friendlier are the emperor penguins phew these cute as a button birds are the largest of all species of penguin growing up to 45 inches and weighing up to 45 kilograms and in that bitterly cold weather we don't blame them for putting on a few extra pounds the chinstrap penguins by comparison are a little smaller but still just as cute rounding out our list of things hidden behind that menacing Antarctic
wall we've got the enormous bird that is the wandering albatross with a captivating blue whale which is the largest animal ever known to have existed the killer whale aka the Orca which has actually rather friendly to humans and finally perhaps Antarctica's most violent creature of them all any guesses no not polar bears there they're the ones that go up in the north it's the leopard seal well that's all for what's really hiding out down in Antarctica do you want to visit there let us know in the comments make sure to like this video subscribe to
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