Case file · Anomaly hotspot
The Gamburtsev Mountains, an Alps under the ice
In 1958 the third Soviet Antarctic Expedition found by seismic sounding a mountain range the size of the Alps, about 2,700 m high, buried beneath more than 600 m of ice near the Pole of Inaccessibility.
1958 CE · -80.50, 76.00 · status: official
The account
How such sharp, young-looking peaks survive in the middle of an old continent was a puzzle until surveys of the International Polar Year (2007–09) found an ancient collision core renewed in the Mesozoic. The range is thought to be where the East Antarctic ice sheet first began to grow 34 million years ago.