From fallen soldiers from WWI to raw blood cells found inside a frozen dinosaur fossil!
Here are ten of the craziest things that have been found frozen in ice!
10: The Frozen Dragon Scientists in Canada announced the discovery
of a frozen dragon hidden in the ice!!
While not exactly a dragon from ancient mythology, it has been identified as a new genus of pterosaur
which was a flying reptile that had a wingspan of over 16 feet and possibly even up to 33
feet.
Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates that ever soared through the sky.
What has confused scientists for a long time is just why they got so large.
Some of these animals managed to reach incredible heights.
According to Mike Habib from the University of Southern California, this dragon lived
at a time when Western Canada was way warmer than it is today during the Cretaceous period,
76 million years ago.
This flying beast would have flown over the heads of dinosaurs, and scientists have called
it Cryodrakon boreas, which means "frozen dragon of the north winds”.
This specific animal died millions of years ago, and it's bones sunk into the earth.
Then when North America was frozen during the last ice age, its fossil got trapped.
But with rising temperatures and thawing ice, paleontologists were finally able to dig it
up.
The partial skeleton was dug out of the ice from Canada's Dinosaur Provincial Park in
1992.
But at first everyone thought it belonged to a pterosaur called Quetzalcoatlus northropi.
The Quetzalcoatlus had a wingspan of over 30 feet and was taller than a giraffe!
It has taken all these years to finally identify this fossil as something different and give
it it’s own name since most discoveries have been partial skeletons which makes it
hard to know if what you have is something new or not.
Closer analysis showed that some of the bones had teeth marks from some type of velociraptor.
There were also holes in the neck which once held air sacs that would help them to fly.
The holes help scientists tell the different species apart.
The search is now on to find more fossils to learn more about these creatures like just
how they were able to fly since they were so big!!
9: Arctic Shipwreck Archaeologists were shocked after making the
haunting discovery of a ship lost during one of the most devastating expeditions of all
time.
The ship had the foreboding name of the H.M.S. Terror, and it was one of two that went missing
during the Franklin Expedition of 1845.
Sir John Franklin was trying to find the Northwest Passage when he got stuck in the ice.
This was 170 years ago, and every last crew member suffered a miserable end in the Arctic
wilderness.
Between the H.M.S. Terror and the H.M.S. Erebus, 133 men lost their lives when they abandoned
the vessels that got stuck in the ice and tried venturing back to civilization.
Many died from malnourishment and starvation, others died from the frigid cold, and a lot
of survivors near the end are believed to have eaten each other.
All these years later, in 2016, the ship was finally found thanks to remotely operated
vehicles run by Parks Canada archaeologists.
An inuit hunter and member of the armed forces had seen a pole sticking out of the ice many
years before and took a picture but dropped the camera so he didn’t have proof.
He didn’t mention it to the team until 7 years later, when he was part of an expedition
to find it again.
It was found underwater off the coast of King William Island in the far north.
Divers went down to the wreckage and stuck the ROVs through openings so that they could
get footage of the interior of the ship.
They explored 20 cabins and compartments, finding dinner plates, beds and desks, and
everything left behind as if the ship had sunk just yesterday.
Historians and archaeologists are trying to figure out just what may have happened to
the crew and what led up to the decision to leave the ships.
Thanks to the cold waters, the ship is so well preserved that it looks like over time
it may reveal pieces to the puzzle.
The ship will not be brought to the surface due to the extreme cold and harsh conditions.
8: Frozen Soldiers Skiers at a small resort town in the Italian
Alps got the shock of a lifetime when they found human remains coming out of the ice.
Melting glaciers in Italy are revealing the bodies of fallen soldiers who lost their lives
in WWI.
Perhaps the most haunting are two missing Austrian soldiers, mummified by the ice.
They were battling high up in the mountains when they died and were covered over by the
elements where they remained frozen for almost 100 years before the glacier began to melt,
revealing their bodies for the first time in just about a century.
The Austrian soldiers were only teenagers when they set out for war.
They were found in remarkably good condition because of the ice that had entombed them
for so long, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and each one with a bullet through the skull.
According to Franco Nicolis of the Archaeological Heritage Office, the boys probably emerged
from the ice in the same condition that they went into it.
But just what kind of battle was going on up in the icy mountains for this to happen?
It’s known today as the White War, and it was the scene of a deadly battle in the beginning
of the First World War in which Italians and Austrians battled each other and the bitter
temperatures in the alps.
For these two soldiers, it would be the last battle they ever fought and it’s likely
their families never learned what happened to them.
7: Creature Brought Back to Life In what sounds like science fiction, scientists
have brought an ancient creature back to life!!
Scientists took a tiny critter that had been frozen in ice for 24,000 years, and slowly
warmed it up until it revived!
It's known as a bdelloid rotifer, and it has a reputation in the scientific community for
being a hardy animal, clearly!
This multicellular animal is almost like a worm that doesn’t have a problem with being
frozen for prolonged periods of time.
There are other animals on Earth that freeze themselves briefly during the coldest seasons,
such as certain frogs – but scientists have always wondered just how long a creature can
remain frozen before it no longer wakes up.
As it turns out, at least 24,000 years!
These rotifers usually live in the water, but as temperatures dropped, the creature
ended up frozen in the soil.
Before scientists reanimated the tiny worm, they were sure to take some serious precautions.
It’s kind of scary to think what the consequences might be when you are thawing something that
has been frozen for so long, as well as reviving a creature that technically should probably
be dead.
Scientists worry that the critter may have been carrying some sort of disease that has
never before been seen by human beings.
If a disease were to be unleashed from an animal that lived in a time before people,
an outbreak could occur that could potentially destroy all human life!
Or at least there is the possibility that it could lead to a catastrophic chain of events
we can’t even imagine.
The researchers took extra precautions to ensure that outbreaks don’t occur and contained
the tiny worm until it died.
What do you think about reviving ancient critters??
Amazing or terrifying??
let me know in the comments below!!
6: Crashed UFO Melting ice in Antarctica may have just revealed
a crashed UFO.
A popular YouTuber claims that he discovered the UFO while using Google Earth.
Based on the satellite images from the alleged crash site, there is a disc about 60 feet
wide sticking out from the ground, half covered in snow and ice.
It doesn't appear to be any kind of natural structure.
Judging by its smooth, circular contours, rumors are flying it was crafted by some kind
of higher intelligence.
Conspiracy theorists on the Internet are raving that this is the proof everyone has been waiting
for that aliens have indeed been to our planet.
They apparently crashed this spacecraft thousands of years ago in Antarctica and as the years
went by, the spacecraft was covered in ice.
But not everyone is convinced.
Some claim the image merely shows a lake, and that it has been manipulated to create
the optical illusion of a spaceship.
Either way, something strange has definitely been uncovered in Antarctica.
The only way to find out the truth of this mysterious object is for someone to actually
go, or wait for more ice to melt and see what’s going on over there!
5: Dinosaur Blood Cells Susannah Maidment and her team at the Imperial
College London were studying bone fossilization by cutting small fragments out of fossils
to analyze them when they accidentally found dinosaur blood.
This is an incredible discovery and could be the first step into creating a real-life
Jurassic Park.
The scientists found blood-like cells from a 75-million-year-old dinosaur that had previously
been frozen under the ground.
This is 10 million years before the T. rex ever existed.
Right now the scientists have yet to find any usable DNA in the blood cells.
But that doesn't mean they're worthless.
Blood cells can still tell a lot about an animal.
For example, the size of the cells themselves can give clues as to the metabolism of the
creature.
The discovery is also exciting because until now, soft flesh tissue was only ever found
in extremely rare fossils from a very specific environment such as frozen in ice, or an extremely
dry place.
But these bones were just regular fossils.
Thanks to Maidment, scientists are realizing they may actually be able to access more of
these types of cells by slicing open bones and looking deep into the fossilized tissue
of ancient beasts.
4: Ice 19
Earlier this year, scientists announced the discovery of the 19th form of water ice.
Called Ice XIX it is extremely rare, formed at ultra-low temperatures and ultra-high pressures.
Researchers say Ice 19 only exists in laboratory experiments.
But they also say it could help us understand more about what's going on deep inside of
the Earth’s mantle and on other planets and moons in the solar system that are significantly
colder than Earth.
Naming a new type of ice is not a simple process.
It must have a completely unique crystal structure.
Scientists also need to identify the simplest repeating structure of the ice, where all
the atoms are inside of that structure, and what the symmetry of the structure is.
Most people are familiar with a variety of six-sided snowflakes and if you’ve seen
them under a microscope they are very beautiful!
But the 6-sided ice crystal is just one of many forms of ice.
It all depends on the oxygen and hydrogen atoms and the density and position.
Ice 19 only has four sides and can only be created in a setting of -247 degrees Fahrenheit.While
it’s not common on earth, it is a normal temperature on other planets.
Understanding ice crystals helps to understand how glaciers flow and the behaviour of the
ice mantle or ice core of different things like Uranus and Neptune and Jupiters’ moons
of ice.
Now the race is on to find Ice XX.
3: Ancient Lion Cubs A pair of cave lion cubs found frozen in the
ice of Siberia were found almost perfectly preserved with their fur, teeth, and soft
pads of their paws still intact.
Since they were found near each other, at first everyone thought the cubs died together
44,000 years ago.
They looked so similar and were so close together they must be related.
But after extensive research, scientists have concluded they died roughly 20,000 years apart.
Scientists believe both were abandoned by their mothers for unknown reasons.
The youngest cub nicknamed Sparta most likely died from hunger, 26000 years ago.
Her body was found in the most extreme stage of starvation, completely robbed of its fat.
Nearby was the other cave lion named Boris who was just 2 or 3 weeks old when he died,
possibly crushed by rocks when his cave den fell in.
Dr. Albert Protopopov who worked closely with the remains said they found internal injuries
which looked like they were caused by an impact.
These little cubs have provided us with so much information about the past.
Genetic analysis has finally proven that ice age cave lions are distinct from modern lions
and are not the same species.
Scientists are now hoping to bring the extinct cave lion back to life using the DNA from
these small cubs.
2: Ancient Viking Box In Norway, hundreds of ancient artifacts have
been revealed thanks to melting glacial ice high up in a mountain passageway.
One of these items stands out above the rest because it was a wooden box with its lid still
sealed in place!!
And you know, who can resist the call of a mystery box!!
Archaeologists opened it for the first time since it was lost in the ice, finally revealing
its curious contents.
What do you think was inside?
Let me know in the comments below!
Inside the box, researchers discovered beeswax.
That's it.
There wasn't any gold, no jewelry, and no magical weapons.
It was just an ordinary beeswax candle.
but imagine how important a candle would be back in the day when there was no electricity.
To understand more about this mysterious relic and why the box only contained a single candle
instead of treasure, we need to look back 1200 years.
The mountains in which the artifact was discovered were used by ancient Vikings as a passage
across Norway.
The passage continued to be used long after the Vikings had gone so this box didn't actually
belong to a Viking.
It has been dated to about 546 years old, about 400 years after the Viking Age ended.
The candle probably wasn't used as a light source on the mission through the mountains.
Instead, it was probably being transported from a seasonal farm to somewhere it could
be sold.
500 years ago, beeswax candles were precious objects worth a small fortune.
1: Lost Whiskey Researchers in Antarctica have made a rather
unique discovery of treasure buried beneath the ice.
In 1907 Sir Ernest Shackleton led a series of expeditions into Antarctica.
The Nimrod expedition found Mr. Shackleton and his party exploring further than anyone
else in the direction of the South Pole.
His final expedition was in 1921 – but it didn’t go so well.
Once Mr. Shackleton returned from the icy wasteland to the main base, he had a heart
attack and died.
He was buried there in Antarctica.
100 years later, researchers uncovered 2 bottles of perfectly preserved Mackinlay whiskey that
had been hiding in the ice.
At first, archaeologists were terrified to take the whiskey bottles out because they
might accidentally damage them.
Researchers waited years to get proper tools delivered to the site so they could expertly
extract the whiskey.
Then, the whiskey was defrosted over around 2 weeks.
They were left with whiskey bottled in 1898 and then frozen when the bottles were only
15 years old.
The bottles had almost certainly been brought along by Sir Ernest Shackleton on one of his
expeditions and then lost.
One of the really cool things is that the original recipe for the whiskey was lost.
However, the distiller that now owns the brand of whiskey paid a private jet to get the bottles
from Antarctica to New Zealand, then to Scotland where they could analyze them.
Using a sample drawn from a syringe stabbed through one of the corks, the distillery was
able to recreate 50,000 limited edition bottles.
Would you drink ancient Antarctic whiskey?
Let me know in the comments!