• Where can you find a top-secret underground military base about to be exposed by melting
ice?
How did an entire forest end up buried under ice?
From prehistoric lifeforms to precious gemstones, here are 15 of the strangest things found
frozen in ice.
15 – ‘Alien Eggs’ • This is sort of like the ice equivalent
of crop circles.
A perfectly round mass of ice with some odd round holes appeared in Utah.
• There aren’t any good explanations for the formation, but the one that the most people
use is “Alien eggs.”
You be the judge.
14 – Pit of human bones • A frozen lake in Northern India holds
the bones of more than 200 dead human bodies.
• A British soldier on patrol during World War 2 found them, and only recently have researchers
figured out why.
• Apparently, those bodies date back to 850 AD, and because of cracks in the skulls,
the culprit is assumed to be a sudden freak hailstorm.
13 – Lake Vostok and its inhabitants • Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake in Antarctica,
is home to a number of organisms and bacteria that are completely unknown to researchers.
• Lake Vostok is thought to have been isolated from the surface for millions of years, and
the organisms found in it are about 80 to 90 percent foreign to any other creature.
• So they’re practically alien lifeforms. 12 – Message in a bottle
• In 1959, Paul T. Walker, an explorer and scientist from Columbus, Ohio, left a message
to take a simple measurement on Canada’s northernmost island.
• Shortly after, he suffered a massive stroke, and died weeks later.
• That simple message, left in a rock pile inside a bottle, were his last words, and
they weren’t discovered until 2013 – 54 years later.
11 – Photos of a doomed expedition • In 1914, the Ross Sea Party set out to
establish supply depots for a cross-continental journey.
• The mission was a success, but not before they lost their ship and were stranded for
three years.
• 100 years later, film negatives from that expedition were recovered and restored.
It’s the first time images emerged from the mission.
10 – Ice maiden • A mummified Incan woman from about 500
years ago was frozen and preserved so well, scientists were able to diagnose her with
a bacterial lung infection.
• The discovery has given researchers insight into the diseases of the past, and may help
them to safeguard against future diseases.
9 – Frozen Alaskan forest • It’s kind of difficult to really grasp
the scale of an actual glacier.
So for reference, the Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska is beginning to reveal a forest.
• Not individual trees.
An entire, actual forest.
• Those forests have remained frozen under the ice for what is estimated to be over 2,000
years.
8 – Methane and carbon dioxide deposits • There is a layer of methane and carbon
dioxide gas under the ice sheets at the poles.
• It’s a very large layer, and the problem is that methane and carbon dioxide are two
of the main culprits of global warming.
• So there is a very real possibility that the current rate of global warming will result
in the release of even more gases from melting permafrost, further compounding the problem.
7 – Camp Century • Speaking of things revealed by global
warming, a top-secret military project in Greenland is likely to be exposed in the next
few years.
• Camp Century was built under the ice in Greenland, and the complex holds secrets we
still don’t know about.
• The US government has already begun move top-secret materials out of the Cold War-era
base, in preparation for the day the melting ice exposes it.
6 – Siberian permafrost crater • The Batagaika crater wasn’t formed by
any sort of impact.
It’s a “megaslump” formed from melting permafrost.
• The area used to be a dense forest, but when the forest was cleared, the direct sunlight
caused the ground to melt, and sink as it became soft and wet.
5 – Precious gems • In 1966, an Air India Boeing 707 crashed
on the side of the highest peak in western Europe.
• But it wasn’t until 2014 that an explorer discovered the site thoroughly enough to discover
a metal box holding over 100 precious gems.
• The gems were valued at about 240 thousand Euros.
4 – 32,000-year-old plants • An Ice Age squirrel is likely the reason
a seed cache was buried some 32 thousand years ago.
• Those seeds were found, completely frozen 124 feet under the Russian permafrost.
• The seeds were so perfectly preserved, the scientists got to work regenerating and
planting them.
• And sure enough, they were indeed able to grow a living plant from 32,000-year-old
seeds.
3 – Ice volcanoes • A series of massive craters in Siberia
used to be mountains of earth-covered ice.
As they warmed, gas filled into the cracks, until one day, they erupted.
• The eruptions not only decimated the ice mounds, the empty spaces where the gas used
to be are now massive craters filling with water.
• Scientists are in a hurry to study the craters now, because in a year or two, they
will likely become lakes that are completely filled with water.
2 – 12,000-year-old puppies • Russia has a lot of ice, which is probably
why they seem to be so good at finding things in ice.
In 2016, they found a puppy.
• A puppy from more than 12 thousand years ago.
• The puppy was preserved to the point of mummification in the ice, and even its brain
is about 80 percent preserved.
• The high level of brain preservation has made scientists consider the possibility of
cloning the now-extinct breed, like a canine Jurassic Park.
1 – Giant virus • One last find from Siberia, this is a
“giant virus” found in the permafrost.
• It’s a prehistoric virus, about 30 thousand years old, and considered “giant” just
because of the size of the cell.
• Naturally, scientists want to re-animate this virus as well – but can’t until they’ve
ensured it can’t infect humans or animals.
• Maybe they ought to stop and think about whether they should.