Science & Technology / Natural Science Disciplines / Earth Science & Astronomy

How We Discovered Antarctica's Ice Is 25 Million Years Older Than We Thought

A Memory of Ice: The Antarctic Voyage of the Glomar Challenger

Elizabeth Truswell

In 1972, a team of scientists aboard the Glomar Challenger set sail for Antarctica with a mission to drill into the ocean floor. What they found shattered everything we thought we knew about the age of the Antarctic ice sheet. Before this voyage, textbooks claimed the ice was only 3 million years old. The evidence they pulled up pushed that date back to at least 25 million years. This is the story of that groundbreaking expedition, written by paleontologist Elizabeth Truswell in her book 'A Memory of Ice: The Antarctic Voyage of the Glomar Challenger'. We'll walk through the key discoveries: how ice-rafted debris proved ancient glaciation, how fossil pollen revealed a lush green Antarctica with palm trees and beech forests, and how this voyage validated plate tectonics theory. You'll also learn about the near-disaster when drilling hit high-pressure natural gas in the Ross Sea, sparking global oil speculation. This video unpacks the science, the history, and the human drama behind one of the most important polar expeditions ever mounted. If you want to understand how Earth's climate really works and why Antarctica matters today, this is for you.