The partial skeleton that defines Cryodrakon was dug up from Canadas Dinosaur Provincial Park in 1992. With such a young history of Antarctic exploration, it is no wonder that there are still many strange things about Antarctica that remain mysterious to this day. Sea Pigs H.P. Antarctica is also a good place to find meteorites, or rocks that fall from space to Earth. Plesiosaurs generally look a little like large manatees with giraffe necks and snake-like heads, though they have four flippers rather than a manatees three. Kacey Deamer is a journalist for Live Science, covering planet earth and innovation. She had electric blue eyes, and a chilling aura. The 27 scientists from eight countries aboard the ship are researching Antarctic polynya, which are areaswhere ice forms rapidly due to "katabatic" winds, which can hit hurricane strengths. Development of any resources found in Antarc-tica will be expensive. After a week, you get one tray of ice cubes. The mysterious skeleton of a creature has been found on Google Maps in Antarctica in footage which has since gone viral. With its ends broken off, that vertebra had avoided identification for years: Paleontologists had even once tentatively described it as a leg bone. This may include adverts from us and 3rd parties based on our understanding. Called " the ugliest creature beneath the waves ," the scotoplanes (scientific name) are what you get when you combine the terror of Cthulhu with the plump, pink and short-legged appearance of a piglet. Great images too. However, the researchers also worry that even hidden ecosystems like this one may be at risk from rapidly warming temperatures caused by climate change. That guy is big! Schulp says from looking at photos of the bones. Bizzard was a young IceWing dragonet, covered in scars. The more that he compared his measurements of Quetzalcoatlus to the Canadian fossil, the more he suspected it wasnt Quetzalcoatlus at all. Meteorites are easier to see on the white ice. A National Geographic team has made the first ascent of the remote Mount Michael, looking for a lava lake in the volcanos crater. The discovery of what appear to be sponges in the pitch-black seawater beneath almost half a mile of ice has biologists baffled. Life Science Environment 'Strange creatures' found under Antarctica. ", Another remarked: "Google search for images of seal skeleton shows a pretty good match. There are not, nor. In 2007, the MS Explorer struck an iceberg while cruising off the Antarctic peninsula and sank, causing an oil spill near penguin breeding grounds. These radar images are even capable of seeing through the ice to get a clear model of the glacier down to the bedrock. These skeletons may have the answer, Scientists are making advancements in birth controlfor men, Blood cleaning? "Seeing the effect of the Tongan volcano, which erupted thousands of kilometres away, was quite remarkable," Stevens said. If they found pieces of what looked like a large Cretaceous azhdarchid, they provisionally assigned them to Quetzalcoatlus, because they didnt know enough about Quetzalcoatlus to say anything different. It is barren, cold and almost seems like it is from another world, so it would make sense that if a UFO were to land on Earth with the hope of going undiscovered, that's where it'd park, and it turns out, that just might have happened.. A researcher examining satellite maps of the continent uncovered what they claim is a UFO, and sent the discovery . The remains first gained notoriety for their scars. This agreement was introduced in 1959 and has been endorsed signed by twelve countries including the United States, Russia, Japan and Australia, among others. Please be respectful of copyright. There are not, nor have there ever been actual dragons on Earth. Using special radars, a British team of specialists discovered the tunnels while flying over West Antarctica. Also, meteorites that fall to Antarctica are preserved in ice for a long time. That is what the katabatic winds are doing in the polynya, removing the ice, exposing the water and making more ice form.". DRAGON FOUND is the first book in The Dragon Queen series and reminded me (in a good way) of Anne McCaffrey's Dragons of Pern - albeit a whole lot steamier and with more political backstabbing and intrigue. The discovery of Cryodrakon means North America was home to at least two genera of large azhdarchids, expanding our knowledge of ancient diversity and how the worlds largest flying creatures eked out a living. As such, Cez and Agness of eTramping were kind enough to provide some spooky, puzzling and altogether creepy things found in Antarctica. He is also interested in evolution, climate change, robots, space exploration, environmental conservation and anything that's been fossilized. But Habib soon saw more intriguing features. Lovecraft would have probably loved to see this interesting creature. NASA Found a Manhattan-Sized Cavern in Antarctica, 60 Scientists Are Trying to Block the Sun, giant underground cavern in the glacier almost as big as Manhattan, map out glaciers and ice sheets in three dimensions, Your Privacy Choices: Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads. OGorman, who was five years old when the fossil was discovered, went on the first of these trips starting in 2012. It was discovered by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1910-1913. Schulp has worked on some plesiosaurs from the Netherlands, but he says the aquatic reptiles are very different in the Southern Hemisphere. (Would the dinosaurs have died out if not for that asteroid? The geologists used hot-water equipment to drill the borehole through more than half a mile of the ice shelf, on the southern edge of Antarctica's Weddell Sea. These things turned out to be over a ton of fossils on the James Ross Island, ranging from 71 to 67 million years old. An. But if you empty and refill the tray each night, you get so much more," Williams said in a statement. Heres the technology that helped scientists find itand what it may have been used for. ", However, others supported the 'ancient creature' claims, adding: "It looks like an alligator skeleton, definitely some type of reptile that walks on land. NASA Found a Manhattan-Sized Cavern in Antarctica The cavern sits where nearly 14 billion tons of ice used to be, all of which melted in the last few years. 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 SpaceX Crew-6 Falcon 9 rocket atop pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, awaiting a delayed launch to deliver a four-man crew to the International Space Station. Examples of animals that live in Antarctica include the blue whale, fin whale, gentoo penguin, kelp gull, and krill. Guy Williams in a statement. The bloblike protrusions seen in the right of the video are clearly a type of sponge, while the stalked creatures on the left are similar to some other sponges found near the Antarctic, he said. 1 The new Xuelong 2 (Snow Dragon 2 . "It looked like a loaf of bread, with a bulge at the top and narrow slope at the bottom," Stevens said. The egg case belongs to the class Clitellata worm, species of which are long extinct which makes it quite an extraordinary finding. Why wetlands are so critical for life on Earth, Rest in compost? Come along for the ride! It was only in 1773 that an expedition led by Captain James Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle. The near-perfect skeleton remains were located in a remote inland area of Antarctica. Antarctic researchers have shared images of the rarely seen scaly ice formation referred to as dragon ice. I am a big fan of the movie The Thing, which presented us with a fictional but horrifying alien. If youre not afraid of spiders yet, these scary things in Antarctica might change your mind if youre lucky enough to see them on an Antarctic cruise. In the icy badlands of Alberta, paleontologists have found a "frozen dragon": a new genus of pterosaur that once soared over the heads of dinosaurs with a wingspan that stretched at least 16. Did an ancient species of a dragon found living in Antarctica? Dr. Williams confirmed to Gizmodo that dragon ice is a variation on pancake ice, which forms "when piles of slushy ice are shaped and sculpted by wave action or winds." Researchers discovered swarms of shrimplike amphipods while they were exploring an underground Antarctic river. The discovery of what appear to be sponges in the pitch-black seawater beneath almost half a mile of ice has biologists baffled. Not according to biology or history. Researchers drilled more than 1,600 feet under the Larsen Ice Shelf. (University of Tasmania) Despite the frigid temperatures, Williams estimated that the ocean was generating more than 1,000 to 1,500 watts per square. The international science expedition is slowly making its way through the Antarctica's sea ice en route to the Ross Sea. Weird Google Earth images appear to show a giant "dome" rammed in the ice and it's sent conspiracy theorists wild. Now, this enormous species of giant pterosaur part of a group known as azhdarchids finally has a name: Cryodrakon boreas, drawing from the ancient Greek words that translate to "cold dragon of the north winds." Thanks to this nearly Manhattan-size gap in the ice, the entire glacier along with the surrounding ice sheet will likely disappear much more quickly. Can we bring a species back from the brink?, Video Story, Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic Society, Copyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. The flying reptilenamed Cryodrakon boreaslived in what is now western Canada about 76 million years ago, during whats known as the Cretaceous period. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, YouTuber Michael Bradbury, who hosts the conspiracy channel MrMBB333,. The melting ice in Antarctica has revealed a skeleton of a mysterious creature - and the network believes it is a dinosaur. But, it could certainly be the subject of a song on their album! Life finds a way, the actor Jeff Goldblum playing scientist Ian Malcolm declared in the 1993 movie Jurassic Park.. The fossil was found in a quarry just northwest of Richmond in June 2011 by Len . But the researchers realized that a separate fossil at the Royal Tyrrell Museuma smashed-up tube of bone 16 inches longwas the middle portion of a neck vertebra from an azhdarchid that probably had a wingspan of more than 30 feet. Antarctica is unlike the rest of the planet. In addition, a small number of researchers have since gotten the chance to see the Quetzalcoatlus fossils up closeincluding Habib, who measured the bones to model how the creature flew. While not part of the same family, the underwater Sea Spiders youll find here are some of the strangest things found in Antarctica to date! Dragon skin occurs when strong "katabatic" winds downslope winds that exist only over icy regions continually lift the polynya's surface ice, subsequently freezing the water below, according. The cavern first appeared in 2012 and most of the ice that once occupied it melted in the last three years. John Higgins The coronavirus pandemic has delayed his. It takes a little more effort and logistics in the first place, and not just everyone stumbles into those fossils, agrees Anne Schulp, vertebrate paleontologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and the Naturalis Biodiversity Center who was not involved in the research. Their appearance is vastly different depending on which ocean you spot them in, but one thing is for certain: the sea pig is the stuff of nightmares, and definitely one of the weirdest things found in Antarctica. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. I always think back to Alien vs. Jupiter and Venus 'kiss' in a stunning planetary conjunction tonight. The flying reptile was said to have . Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. it has spawned numerous theories on what it could be. We may earn commission if you buy from a link. Scary flick, great performance by Kirk Russell. Nearly all of these have been found since 1976. A fossil from Antarctica is now the heaviest known animal in this group of prehistoric marine reptiles. He thinks the work is well done, and hes happy that the team hasnt jumped to hasty conclusionsOGorman even hesitates to say whether the species is definitely from the Aristonectes genus, since further evidence may put the species in a new genus entirely. Bats and agaves make tequila possibleand theyre both at risk, This empress was the most dangerous woman in Rome. More work on Cryodrakon may help crack the mystery and add more clues to this large pterosaurs lifestyle. The researchers also unexpectedly discovered that the water column underground split into four or five distinct layers of water flowing in opposite directions. All rights reserved, finally unearthed the heaviest known elasmosaur, Find out about a plesiosaur fossil found with a baby preserved in its body, mass extinction event that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs, Would the dinosaurs have died out if not for that asteroid? Especially since you need to zoom in on a dark ocean cavern to spot it. 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. Most of these magnificent ice giants are either snow-capped and white, or have a clear turquoise color. This cycle produces 10 times more than the average amount of sea ice formed in the coastal polynyas, Williams said. BBC's correspondent predicts leadership chaos even after CDU vote[VIDEO]Stunning backlash grows in revolt over EU's vaccine rollout[VIDEO]Prince William 'concerned' that Harry is trying to 'exploit' Diana[INSIGHT]. If you make a purchase through these links, at no extra cost to you, I will earn a small commission (for which I am very grateful). While the boulder is located about 150 miles from the ocean, the direction of the currents beneath the ice shelf suggests the nearest plant life is up to 1,000 miles away, Griffiths said. I did say there were some scary facts about Antarctica! Some of these Antarctica scary facts have simple explanations, others not so much. It's thought both types of stationary animals are types of sponges or are related to sponges, but scientists did not expect to find them beneath the ice shelf, in pitch-blackness and hundreds of miles from the coast. "This could be very, very old, going back to prehistoric Antartica. It took decades of struggling with the weather on a small, desolate island off the Antarctic Peninsula. "I would guess this is somewhere in the region of 15 to 20ft. Lovecraft would have probably loved to see this interesting creature. Its like you go out to Africa, and you find some giant cat toothits probably a really big lion, but without the rest of the lion attached to it, its a tooth!, Martin-Silverstone agrees with the cautious approach: I think theyre right that its an azhdarchid [neck] vertebraIve seen this specimen, and I completely agree that thats what it is, she says. It's a rare sight, but that's in part because winter inAntarctica is a bitch and there aren't many people hanging around throwing parties. For years it was a mystery we didnt know if they were elasmosaurs or not, says Jos OGorman, a paleontologist with the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET) who is based at the Museum of La Plata near Buenos Aires. Dragon skin occurs when strong "katabatic" winds downslope winds that exist only over icy regions continually lift the polynya's surface ice, subsequently freezing the water below, according to Guy Williams, a polar oceanographer from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia. Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to take to the skies. According to a study published in Frontiers in Marine Science, researchers have discovered a massive living world below Antarctica's icy surface that could be as big as 5 million square. This Antarctica expedition focused on recovering large volume samples of the 2-plus-million-year-old ice discovered four years earlier. When it was walking on the ground, as azhdarchids often did, it was more than eight feet tall at the shoulder, roughly the same height as some giraffes. The shark's scientific name, Dracopristis hoffmanorum, was announced in a press release by the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science (NMMNHS) on Thursday. Rare find'. You can unsubscribe at any time. YouTuber Michael Bradbury, who hosts the conspiracychannel MrMBB333, suggested that the skeleton remains indicated a dinosaur which had been preserved in the Antarctic ice. But to their surprise, the camera showed colonies of stationary animals attached to the rock probably sponges and related sea creatures. What we find by visiting the coordinates 7200' 36.00'' S, 168 34' 40.00'' E is a mysterious face in the ice - seemingly complete with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. There are probably plenty of discoveries in Antarctica still to be made. Its intact. The explorer in me thinks that there must still be plenty more to find! I love these critters. A radar image of Thwaites from 2011 to 2017. By KAI GENG It could be an old dinosaur. But to those accustomed to the Hollywood image of an iceberg, seeing striped ones can make one feel a bit uneasy. After completing her undergraduate degree in journalism and environmental studies at Ithaca College, Kacey pursued her master's in Specialized Journalism: Climate Change at USC Annenberg. The roughly 5,000-year-old human remains were found in graves from the Yamnaya culture, and the discovery may partially explain their rapid expansion throughout Europe. The 'Dragon-skin' ice is very rare and has not been spotted in Antarctica since 2007 . This nearly whole, deep-black skull belongs to the most complete specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex on display in Europe, an individual nicknamed Tristan Otto. It was visible as a long depression, or groove, stretching across the ice a hallmark of an underground river. Jun 26, 2021 12 The discovery of a huge fossilised skull that was wrapped up and hidden in a Chinese well nearly 90 years ago has forced scientists to rewrite the story of human evolution. Although the alleged Dragon creature in the video is not visible clearly in the blurry and dark footage, the video has been shared quite often. Maybe not a spooky as the rest of the creepy facts about Antarctica on this list. 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. It was discovered in 1986 by the South African Speleological Association. I'm a fun-loving blogger and coach from New Zealand, living in the south of Albania! YouTube channel Third Phase of Moon shared the anomaly back in August, sent to them by a viewer. Please be respectful of copyright. Benedikt von Imhoff. The stripes color can be blue, black, or green. Its a huge area, but we have a tiny widow into it, Griffiths said. One place I have not yet managed to get to maybe one day. All 154 people on board survived after being rescued by nearby vessels. The only things you would expect to find are things that can wander around and find food, he said. Most of the 45,000 meteorites found in Antarctica over the past century have only weighed a few grams, The Independent noted. Maybe were being too harsh here after all, this is just a satellite image were talking about. Harry is a U.K.-based staff writer at Live Science. "But what is clear is that great changes are afoot.". It was an adventure., Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. The Southern Hemisphereat least the plesiosaurscould definitely use some attention, he says. The discovery of the secret shrimp-infested structure had the team "jumping up and down for joy," Stevens added. PRO TIP: My go-to camera for all my travels is the Sony A7iii I highly recommend it! One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. Discovered in 2010 in Montanas famed Hell Creek Formation of the late Cretaceous, the 40-foot-long fossil took four years to excavate and prepare., The 'extreme cruelty' around the global trade in frog legs, What does cancer smell like? Well, theyre not actually spiders, but a type of primitive marine arthropod. What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? It wasnt until this year that researchers have found out that the waterfall springs from a lake trapped under the ice for over a million years! A BONKERS conspiracy theorist claims to have found the skeleton of a "mysterious" creature on Google Earth. "It is a reminder about just how connected our whole planet is. But I would be much more conservative in saying its Cryodrakon, because, yeah, theres no features on that at all.. Bryozoans found in the habitat. Fact Check: A video in circulation online since early 2015 claims to show a Real Dragon found Alive inside a Cave, caught on Camera. Now scientists have learned why its collapsing so quickly: Theres a giant underground cavern in the glacier almost as big as Manhattan. 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. Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, She has been put through hell and come out the other side . Scientists aboard the U.S. icebreaker research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer recently sailed to an Antarctic polynya areas of open water that act as ice factories to study the process of ice formation during the autumn-winter season. At the time, though, he didnt have the resources to excavate the fossil find, but he informed researchers in Argentina about the discovery. New York, It wouldve been nice to have pictures accompanying this article. All rights reserved. As a species, they are present all around the planet, and can be as small as 1 millimeter in size. The amber adds to fossil evidence that many dinosaurs. The team's research has more important ends in mind, but the images of dragon ice are a reminder that there is beauty to be found even in the harshest regions on the planet. The host shows the creatures front and rear limbs, as the curve of its spine and its skull. What comes to your mind when you hear the word iceberg? The researchers set up camp a couple of days before the record-shattering eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Haapai volcano in Tonga on Jan. 15. Unauthorized use is prohibited. The extremely cold water is full of animals such as Antarctic krill, a . (Find out about a plesiosaur fossil found with a baby preserved in its body.). One of the weird things about Antarctica is that its very good at preserving things the Endurance was found very well preserved thanks to Antarcticas cold waters. The cavern is visible as the growing red blob in the center of the image. I recommend either SafetyWing or World Nomads. 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. The Dragon's Breath cave is the largest non subglacial lake in the world. The animal, when alive, would not have been a frozen dragon, notes study coauthor Mike Habib, a paleontologist at the University of Southern California. For 40 years, paleontologist Wann Langston worked off-and-on to complete the descriptionbut then he died in 2013, leaving the work unfinished.