Scientists are uncovering ancient rivers, mountains and vast canyons hidden beneath Antarctica’s ice, revealing clues about the continent’s past and its future in a warming world
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At first glance, Antarctica can appear relatively featureless: a vast expanse of white stretching across the bottom of the planet. But beneath its enormous ice sheet lies an altogether different landscape, filled with mountains, deep canyons, valleys and plains that, in many places, haven’t seen daylight for millions of years.
Seeing this hidden world is no easy task. Antarctica’s ice is more than two kilometres thick on average and reaches almost 4.8 kilometres at its deepest point, meaning scientists can’t simply observe the landscape beneath it. Traditionally, researchers have used radar aboard aircraft to peer through the ice, gradually building up a picture of the bedrock below.
The sheer size of Antarctica, however, makes mapping the entire continent difficult. Survey flights can be separated by tens of kilometres, leaving researchers to fill in large gaps between individual measurements. More recently, scientists have begun combining these observations with satellite data and an understanding of how ice moves across the landscape beneath it.
The principle is surprisingly simple. Just as water flowing over a submerged rock can produce ripples and eddies at the surface, hills and ridges beneath Antarctica can leave subtle clues in the ice flowing above them. By studying the shape and movement of the ice, researchers can therefore learn more about the landscape hidden underneath.
Using this approach, scientists have revealed tens of thousands of previously unmapped hills and ridges, alongside new details of buried mountains and canyons. Among the features identified is an enormous channel in the Maud Subglacial Basin, measuring around 50 metres deep and six kilometres wide. It stretches for almost 400 kilometres beneath the ice – roughly the distance from London to Newcastle.
Other discoveries offer glimpses of an Antarctica that existed long before it became the frozen continent we know today. Beneath East Antarctica, researchers have identified ancient, remarkably flat surfaces thought to have been shaped by large rivers before the continent was engulfed by ice around 34 million years ago. Some of these landscapes appear to have survived beneath the ice largely intact for more than 30 million years.
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Scientists are now piecing these discoveries together to create increasingly detailed maps of the continent. In 2025, researchers released Bedmap3, the most detailed map yet of Antarctica’s bedrock, assembled from more than six decades of measurements gathered by satellites, aircraft, ships and even dog-drawn sleds.
The map allows Antarctica to be viewed as though its 27 million cubic kilometres of ice had been stripped away, revealing the mountains, valleys and canyons concealed below.
Mapping this hidden world is about more than discovering what Antarctica looks like underneath. The shape of the bedrock influences how the ice above it moves: ridges can slow its flow, while valleys and deep troughs can provide routes along which glaciers accelerate. Understanding this landscape can therefore help scientists model how Antarctica’s enormous ice sheet may respond as the climate warms.
