10 Most Amazing Discoveries Found Frozen In Ice

hi it's katrina from alligators snorkeling in the frozen swamp to photographs from a doomed hot air balloon expedition here are 10 amazing things found frozen in ice number 10. marine reptiles in chile there is an enormous glacier that is beginning to melt revealing a prehistoric monster actually so far scientists have uncovered 46 different animal remains belonging to four different species of ichthyosaur these were large and fast marine reptiles that lived during the mesozoic era from 245 to 90 million years ago ichthyosaurus breathed air and gave birth to live young they ranged anywhere from a few feet to almost the size of a blue whale the skeletons discovered in the glacier ranged from adults to females with embryos that were likely killed during mudslides while they were hunting in a canyon mudflows would fall like an avalanche drowning and disorienting the ichthyosaurs they were preserved in deep sea sediments and then later exposed by the melting glacier the largest one found measures over 16 feet in length some were so well preserved that they even have soft tissue this graveyard beneath the glacier is a treasure trove of information helping us to learn more about these ancient reptiles number nine frozen alligators on a freezing morning in january george howard thought the lumps sticking out of the iced over swamp were tree stumps turns out that these stumps at the swamp park alligator preserve in north carolina were actually his alligators at first he panicked were they all dead he was supposed to be taking care of them how could he let this happen besides the ethical quandary he also panicked over the financial consequences how are they supposed to recover from this the alligator snouts were locked in the ice and they were not moving so before taking a pic to the ice he quickly googled alligators in ice he was flooded with relief they weren't dead he discovered that his fears were unwarranted gators do this all the time this is their way of making it through the winter months when their habitats often freeze over it was cold last year and the swamp waters kept freezing and thawing over and over the gators in swamp park kept pushing their snouts through the frozen layer of ice staying immobile with their snout stuck like a breathing tube as it turns out alligators prepare for these freezing temperatures pretty successfully as the temperature drops these creatures hang out in shallow waters and poke their noses in the air to craft a breathing zone after enough time the water solidifies and the gators get locked into their spots while they just hang out below they basically turn off their metabolism and since they don't use energy they don't need to eat scientists in 1990 observed a group of alligators doing this behavior and discovered that baby alligators do not know how to do it the little ones have to learn it from their parents so other species in warmer areas might not know how to do this either strangely enough no one has a solid explanation for how gators developed this behavior other than to say it's an evolutionary adaptation but since gators have been around millions of years they must have been doing this for a long time number eight st joseph's lighthouse during the winter months lake michigan can get pretty cold and when snow storms start to batter the area many of its lighthouses wear their ice for quite a long time that's what makes st joseph's lighthouse such a wonder to see during the winter many of the lighthouses on lake michigan like saint joseph can develop a wonderful blanket of ice on their exteriors which drives environmental lovers to come to the area and see what all the fuss is about for example tom gill goes to see these lighthouses regularly there are beautiful layers of ice that form on and around these lighthouses giving way to long icicles that seem to tower into the sky making them appear as if they're ice castles meant for a queen however this only happens under very strict conditions it needs to be cold but the water around can't be completely frozen then the wind needs to be pretty strong that's what throws layer upon layer of new water on the lighthouse which in turn freezes in fact you can determine which way the wind is blowing by looking at the direction of the icicles that form on the lighthouse st joseph's lighthouse is located in a position that puts it into contact with tons of waves meaning that it develops a truly wondrous blanket of ice over its entire exterior if you're ever in the area you should definitely check these out for yourself have you ever seen a frozen lighthouse let me know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already number 7. iron age artifacts in 2020 a group of norwegian archaeologists started finding artifacts from the vikings and the iron age frozen inside of one of the melting glaciers in the jatunheim mountains in norway just like the rest of the world a lot of glaciers are quickly melting however alongside this somber course of events have come new discoveries about our past they first came across a long-lost trade route from the viking era in 2011 but due to the thawing glacial ice they've been discovering more and more artifacts in the area given the speed at which the glaciers are melting these scientists really wanted to find and collect these artifacts as fast as possible so they don't get damaged the same thing that's happening in siberia with frozen animals from the ice age and they've definitely been rewarded for their efforts since these artifacts were frozen in ice they've been remarkably well preserved they've found hundreds of artifacts in the area including shoes wool sleds knives and horseshoes when i say well preserved i mean it you could even wear one of these shoes or a garment made by vikings though of course you shouldn't since they are relics but if you did i don't think that anybody would know that they were that old why is there so much stuff in the area the horseshoes indicate that the area was probably a road a highway for traveling vikings likely on trading expeditions by dating many of the artifacts that they've discovered researchers suggest that while the road was once immensely popular it probably lost some steam when the black plague hit europe in the 1300s sadly the glacier is melting far more than it ever has before it's even eliminating the original ground where the vikings likely traveled this situation is definitely a win-lose you can find important elements of our history like these but on the other hand we are losing significant amounts of ice nowhere is it more apparent than in the areas that were once frozen and are thawing at a very fast rate number 6. the yucca mammoth the yuca mammoth is one of the most well-known and scientifically valuable animals that have ever been found it was discovered in 2010 within the siberian permafrost on the coast of the laptev sea and russia the most unusual thing about this 39 thousand-year-old mammoth was that it was mummified and had the most intact mammoth brain ever found with folds and blood vessels still visible finding specimens like this is incredibly helpful to understanding the species studies of the brain showed it to be very similar to modern day elephants and also led to researchers developing better ways of storing mammoths in the future when new ones are found along with the yuca mammoth a number of other ones have been found in the region although not in as good condition and have been highly sought after by researchers for a different purpose because of their relatively intact dna and their status as an intriguing extinct animal that is very similar to some that exist today the mammoth is a great candidate for bringing a species back from extinction using cutting-edge technology it's believed that with a bit of luck and perseverance we might once again see these giants alive and well and maybe within just a few years would you want to see that let me know in the comments below number 5. ancient alaskan forest did you know there's a forest in alaska that's been hidden for over 1 000 years again due to melting glaciers this once well concealed forest is coming back into view as the mendenhall glacier has been melting for the past 50 years or so it's revealed the occasional log but recently it's been tree after tree many of them somewhat intact that's when people realized that they might have found a completely hidden forest scientists are not yet positive what kinds of trees they are but hemlock and spruce trees grow in the area and are about the same size so that's what they think is there right now but they're still on the prowl to find out more how did a forest grow inside of a glacier researchers think that it likely started about 1 000 years ago when the glacier was growing bigger and bigger as glaciers grow they spit out layers of gravel and this forest likely got caught in one of those gravelly missions then the glacier just kept moving forward freezing the forest in time as it turns out the mendenhall glacier is melting at a terrifying rate of around 170 feet per year and that trend doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon this isn't a very good sign for the earth in general but it's definitely interesting to know that there is a forest trapped underneath glacial ice and that there might even be many more hopefully we'll be able to find out more about this ancient forest in the coming years number 4. 46 000 year old bird scientists recently found the remains of a bird which they've dated to be somewhere around 46 000 years old now things can obviously last a long time in ice but 46 000 years that's quite impressive right that amount of time puts this bird back in the last ice age at least but siberia is cold enough that its permafrost is pretty well able to preserve everything locked underneath its soil loved allen a genetics professor at stockholm center for paleogenetics and one of the three men who were present at the bird's discovery claimed that the bird seemed like it had died just a few days ago you'd think that bacteria or scavengers would have gotten to its body after it died but they didn't so scientists were pretty excited a fine like this is extremely useful because it is the first almost totally undamaged bird from that age they were lucky to find this bird in this state because being so small it could have disintegrated quickly or it could have been easy prey for another animal but it was not so it seems that this little animal has a lot to tell us about its history to put this in perspective you have to imagine this bird flying around with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats through sequencing its dna researchers were able to determine that this bird was a horned lark those birds split into two different subspecies at some point in time and this bird helped scientists understand how a brand new species of horned lark could have formed in virtue of the changing climate at the time number three andre's balloon expedition the north pole was the crown jewel for many explorers in the past but it was a treacherous journey regardless of your method of travel despite this in 1897 a group of three swedish explorers put their brains together and figured that getting there would be easier if they traveled via hot air balloon essay andre and his team set out to do the impossible and it didn't go very well now remembered as the arctic balloon expedition they planned to make history but the whole thing was reminiscent of don quixote the sort of idealistic journey undertaken without the proper preparation based on pure romanticism in july 1897 the three left from zvalbard but they were ill-equipped for what would come next apparently they hadn't planned for the trip effectively and andre made them use a drag rope method to steer the vessel which weighed the ship down after a mere couple of days the balloon had depleted its helium and fell to the ground after that they were stuck the elements consumed them and they were frozen in the ice for years no one knew what had happened to them then in 1930 explorers found the remains of their camp along with the expedition members and diaries cameras and film all frozen incredibly 93 photographs were saved you can see the eerie photos of the doomed expedition with the small team putting the balloon together setting up camp and hunting polar bears number two worms just imagine being in a state of a coma for 42 thousand years and then waking up again i know it looks like something out of a movie but it's not far from the truth a group of nematodes which are parasites that hang out in the soil were recently brought back to life after an astonishing 42 thousand years frozen in ice we all may be a little bit groggy after we wake up in the morning but one can only imagine how these nematodes must have felt when they emerged back to life these worms were found in the melting siberian permafrost which is releasing a ton of hidden treasures back into the world when scientists working in the area came upon the worms they decided that they'd try to bring them back to life because why not that's the kind of thing a mad scientist would do don't you think anyway they were able to bring two of these species back to life this is the first time that any evidence has been gathered that multicellular organisms can come back to life after unthawing after so many years maybe tardigrades but we haven't found any that old yet nematodes are very little usually they're only about one millimeter long however they can live around one kilometer below the ground which signals their amazing resilience they are also known to adapt to their environments very well depending on where they live they can grow different types of mouths viruses have also been seen to pop back to life after unthawing from the siberian permafrost but nematodes are the first time an organism this complicated has ever been able to do so that is quite an achievement and much better than a virus number one allen hills 84001 allen hills 84001 or alh is a meteorite which was discovered by a team of meteorite hunters in the antarctic ice in 1984. from the outside it doesn't look like much it's a little over three and a half pounds and it looks more like a weird brick than anything from out of this world like all other meteorites it had a thick layer of glass known as a fusion crust which all meteorites share on their exteriors it's the sign that they've burnt up while passing through our atmosphere they also thought it probably came from a volcano on mars a long time ago in the years since it was discovered alh has turned into something of a phenomenon a group of researchers in 1996 suggested that the microbial fossils inside of alh could point to the existence of ancient life on mars alh contained so-called magnetite particles which as far as scientists knew never occur outside of biological contexts because of this alh might point to life outside of earth however like with any big purported breakthrough there were skeptics the fossils that were found in the specimen might have been the after effect of evaluation by electron microscopes and the molecules inside of alh could possibly have formed regardless of microbes on mars but the magnetite particles are still unexplained so who knows maybe alh does indeed indicate that there's more to life than we know about what do you think let me know in the comments below thanks for watching have you ever found anything weird frozen in ice let me know in the comments below and be sure to subscribe if you haven't already see you next time bye

Channel: Origins Explained

Views: 92,899

Rating: 4.8499999 out of 5

Keywords: origins explained, most amazing discoveries found frozen in ice, amazing discoveries, recent discoveries, frozen in ice, frozen in time, frozen discoveries, discoveries frozen in ice, archaeological discoveries, strange discoveries, bizarre discoveries, incredible discoveries, unusual discoveries, recent finds, discoveries found, discoveries found in ice, ice discoveries, recent archaeological discoveries, mysterious things, found frozen in ice, found frozen in time

Id: K0gXKKW1lME

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020