Microscopic organisms like bdelloid rotifers have evolved extraordinary survival mechanisms including cryptobiosis (a dormant state where metabolism pauses), horizontal gene transfer (borrowing genetic material from other organisms), and parthenogenesis (reproduction from unfertilized eggs), allowing them to survive extreme conditions such as freezing in permafrost for tens of thousands of years, dehydration, and even space exposure. These adaptations demonstrate how life can persist in seemingly impossible environments through specialized biological strategies.
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IT’S NOT CGI : Giant Creature Breaks Through Antarctic IceAdded:
In 2012, a scientific expedition to Antarctica was nearing a groundbreaking [music] discovery. After drilling 2 miles into the thick ice, scientists [music] were just inches away from reaching water that hadn't seen sunlight in 20 million years.
This pristine water, untouched by the outside [music] world for millennia, could hold unimaginable secrets about the past and the history of life on Earth.
But as they neared the water's [music] surface, communication with the team suddenly went dark.
Five days later, two of the scientists were found dead, and the official report stated their deaths were caused by hypothermia.
However, there was a witness who suggested that the story was far more complicated than it appeared. Antarctica is unique in many ways. It is not owned by any country, and the laws governing its land and research are controlled by the Antarctic Treaty, which heavily regulates access to the continent.
Visitors are restricted to specific zones, and they are [music] required to be accompanied by an approved escort to ensure they don't stray into areas that are off-limits.
While these regulations are presented [music] as measures to protect the fragile environment of Antarctica, many insiders believe there is another, far more sinister reason for the strict control. Something dangerous and far-reaching lies buried beneath the ice.
In February 2021, a chilling image appeared on the paranormal board of 4chan.
A user posted a screenshot of Google Maps showing a bizarre shape in the frozen landscape. What appeared [music] to be a massive, spider-like creature.
At first, people dismissed [music] it as a hoax, a product of imagination or digital manipulation.
However, things [music] took a strange turn when Anton, the son of a former Navy lieutenant who had been stationed at McMurdo Base [music] in the 1990s, posted photographs of his father's military [music] memorabilia.
His father, Joe, had uncovered strange and disturbing occurrences in Antarctica, especially in a restricted [music] zone to the east of McMurdo.
Joe had attempted to inquire about the area, >> [music] >> but he was met with resistance and told that the information was classified.
Anton revealed the coordinates of the location, which, when checked on Google Earth, displayed blurred images.
Joe's first [music] night at McMurdo was marked by a mysterious event that would haunt him [music] for years.
Soldiers arrived at the base carrying a man who was critically injured. The injuries were too precise, >> [music] >> too unnatural for a simple animal attack, and the soldier who brought him in was in a panic. The soldier muttered something about releasing something we shouldn't have. When Joe pressed for more information, he was met with hostility and a gun was pointed at him.
The soldiers refused to speak further on the matter.
This encounter was only the beginning of Joe's unsettling experiences [music] at the base.
By the early 2000s, reports started emerging from [music] a Japanese ship patrolling the Antarctic waters.
The crew claimed to have spotted [music] what they initially thought was an iceberg until it began to move.
The object, which was 60 ft long, had pale skin and large black eyes, features that seemed otherworldly.
Some of the crew reported seeing arms, hands, [music] and fingers on the creature, while others insisted it had a long tail resembling a mermaid's.
This mysterious creature, later dubbed Ningen, would occasionally [music] surface to observe the ships before vanishing again into the icy depths.
In 2007, a satellite image surfaced showing something large moving beneath the water near the Antarctic coastline.
Cryptozoologists [music] and conspiracy theorists alike were quick to speculate that this could be an intelligent species long hidden from humanity in the frigid dark depths of the Antarctic oceans. Some even suggested that it might be the product of a secret sinister genetic experiment, a hybrid of whale DNA and human genetics designed to create a creature with abilities [music] far beyond anything nature had intended.
As Joe continued his investigation at McMurdo, he began to notice an increasing number of soldiers arriving with strange precise injuries.
These wounds, too perfect [music] to be the result of animal attacks, were attributed to encounters with creatures known as striders.
The striders were massive terrifying entities capable of leaping across the icy terrain in incredible bounds.
As Joe dug deeper into classified files, he discovered links [music] between Antarctica and secret military operations.
It appeared that the striders were part of a covert project that involved breeding super predators, creatures designed to carry out specific highly dangerous missions, including human trafficking.
The secret research facilities that Joe uncovered were breeding [music] these creatures in hidden laboratories deep beneath the ice.
Joe's investigation revealed that the goal of this breeding program was not just to create a terrifying monster, but to use it as a tool for trafficking humans across borders.
He uncovered evidence of a global human trafficking network with shipments of people being sent to various parts of the world. This secret operation, which had connections to powerful governments and organizations, was operating under the radar. Its full scope hidden from the public eye.
In 2017, researchers studying Lake Vostok, one of the largest subglacial lakes in Antarctica discovered DNA samples that suggested the presence of a life form with intelligence far beyond that of any known species.
The creature known as organism 46B was captured temporarily by a Russian research team and its abilities [music] were nothing short of astonishing.
The creature could disable security systems and even change its shape adapting to its surroundings.
This was not just an ancient predator.
It had evolved into something far more dangerous than anyone could have imagined. The official Russian report which claimed the research was focused on studying bacteria failed to mention the true nature of the creature. Later, the records were erased and any trace of the creature was scrubbed from the official record.
But Joe's [snorts] investigation didn't end there. His quest for the truth led him to a hidden journal that described the strider's terrifying abilities in even greater detail.
As Joe pieced together the information, he uncovered evidence of a secret alliance between the US, China, and Chile working together to create a monstrous army of these [music] creatures.
The striders were designed for very specific missions including targeted human trafficking. Joe's investigation revealed that this [music] network of operations extended far beyond Antarctica connecting secret laboratories, military [music] bases, and underground tunnels that spanned the globe.
After Joe's [music] untimely death, his son Anton discovered his father's old computer filled with files that could expose the truth.
Anton began [music] the long process of recovering the lost data, but he quickly learned that others [music] who had tried to reveal the secrets of Antarctica's hidden operations had been silenced.
Anton's final post was a desperate [music] plea for help, but just days later he vanished without a trace.
The government has since scrubbed all images [music] and data related to these discoveries, but many believe that the dark network of creatures and secret operations still exists beneath the ice.
It's reach extending into every corner of the world.
The full extent of what lies beneath Antarctica's frozen surface may never be fully understood.
Some believe that there are forces at play far beyond human comprehension [music] hidden in the cold depths of the continent.
Whether these creatures are the result of nature, genetic experimentation, or something else entirely, one thing is certain. The mysteries of Antarctica are far from solved, [music] and the truth may be far more terrifying than we could ever imagine.
In 2021, while drilling about 11 ft beneath the surface of permafrost in Northeastern Siberia, researchers uncovered a 24,000-year-old frozen life form. And then, they brought it to life before cloning it, or better said, it cloned itself.
This might sound like the beginning of a sinister horror story, but don't worry.
It's actually quite the opposite. What scientists unearthed was a microscopic frozen organism that could fundamentally reshape what we think about evolution and survival. [music] The uncovered tiny creatures are called bdelloid rotifers, microscopic animals with little wheel-like mouths [music] that they use both for moving and feeding.
They were first discovered in 1696 and are fairly common in freshwater environments around the world with a few saltwater species.
They might seem unremarkable, but scientists have been studying them since early microscopes made it possible to actually see them >> [music] >> because even though there are only a few dozen microns wide, they're surprisingly complex with brains, guts, muscles, and reproductive systems.
Could it be that within that complexity lies the secret to ultimate resilience, maybe even for us humans?
Let's break it down. These creatures are extremophiles. That means they can survive being completely drained of water at any point in their life cycle, then lie dormant until rehydrated.
But that's not all. They can also persevere through some of the harshest conditions on Earth or in outer space or even being stuck in the Siberian permafrost wasteland for tens of thousands of years.
This is possible because they can enter cryptobiosis, a condition where organisms pause their metabolism and become nearly inactive.
It may sound sciency, but actually some of the everyday products we eat are stored in a fridge thanks to this phenomenon.
Take yeast for example.
Live yeast cells are surrounded by a protective layer [music] made of dead cells and some nutrients.
You can keep yeast at room temperature, but if cryptobiosis comes into play in the form of your fridge or freezer, it stores much better and longer.
During cryptobiosis, rotifers accumulate protective compounds like chaperone proteins, which help them repair and recover once favorable conditions return.
Chaperone proteins are like tiny bodyguards. Their job is to keep other proteins in the cell from falling apart under pressure.
When the body is stressed, whether from heat, cold, toxins, dehydration, or just the natural aging process, the proteins inside our cells can start to misfold.
Proteins need to be folded into very specific shapes to function properly, and when that structure breaks down, they [music] become useless or worse, harmful.
Misfolded proteins can pile up and interfere with normal cell function.
In some cases, they clump together in ways that poison the [music] cell.
This kind of damage is even linked to serious health conditions.
So, if rotifers have developed powerful proteins that prevent cellular chaos even under extreme conditions, could we use them to protect human cells from diseases and aging?
By analyzing [music] the age of the ice they were found in, scientists figured out that these frozen rotifers were at least 24,000 years old.
That's a huge leap from earlier studies, which showed they could survive frozen for only about 10 years. Now, that's what you call record-breaking.
This period of Earth's history is known as the Late Pleistocene Epoch, a time dominated by the Ice Age, which means these invertebrates were lying dormant when Manny and Sid were having their adventure while roaming the icy landscapes.
Along with saber-toothed cats and giant ground sloths.
Fun fact, although animated movies like Ice Age show woolly mammoths as huge towering giants, they were actually about the same size and weight as today's average African elephant. Nature and evolution can be so cruel, yet fascinatingly unpredictable.
Massive, menacing beasts that came from the Ice Age couldn't survive it, yet something tiny and weird like a bdelloid could.
But, regarding our unfrozen creature, after the soil thawed, the organism didn't just begin moving again. It also started reproducing. This is thanks to an ability called parthenogenesis, [music] a specific form of reproduction in which embryos develop from unfertilized eggs, allowing them to [music] reproduce independently.
It really is like cloning, but it happens naturally. Many organisms, such [music] as certain insects, reptiles, and even some birds are capable of parthenogenesis, at least under specific conditions.
For example, [music] in honeybees, males develop from unfertilized eggs through parthenogenesis, making them genetic copies of their mother. However, parthenogenesis is often seen as an evolutionary disadvantage [music] because it limits genetic diversity, meaning that most species that reproduce this way eventually face extinction.
Despite this, bdelloid rotifers have diversified into over 450 [music] distinct species over millions of years, which is extremely rare.
Scientists believe their survival comes down to a few evolutionary adaptations.
They can pause their metabolism through cryptobiosis, repair their DNA with specialized proteins, and even borrow useful [music] genes from other organisms using a process called horizontal gene transfer.
Unlike most animals, which rely solely on inherited DNA, these organisms can steal genetic material from bacteria, fungi, and even plants, splicing foreign genes into their genome to gain new survival traits. Some studies have shown that up to 10% of their active genome comes from foreign DNA. This could explain their extraordinary resilience.
They borrow genes for stress resistance, toxin breakdown, or radiation repair, essentially patching and upgrading their DNA in real time.
It's not like the Mind Flayer from Stranger Things, where the creature absorbs another organism to improve itself and grow.
It's more like a spy stealing a blueprint from a rival lab to learn its secrets.
When cells rupture, for example, when bacteria die nearby, bdelloids scoop up loose DNA fragments and integrate them into their own genome. Interestingly, the usual expected lifespan of bdelloid rotifers under normal circumstances is only 2 weeks.
The soil sample that contained these rotifers also held nematodes, or roundworms, another group of tiny survivors already known to withstand tens of thousands of years ice bound.
This isn't just limited to microscopic animals.
Researchers have successfully regrown Antarctic moss and entire Campion plants from seeds and samples frozen for hundreds or even thousands of years. In 2016, a team of Japanese scientists brought tardigrades, or simply water bears, back to life after 30 years in cryptobiosis.
Tardigrades are even more impressive because they can live in a suspended state for up to 30 years without food or water and with temperature swings from deep freeze to 300° Fahrenheit. These guys can also endure crushing deep-sea pressures, vacuum, microgravity, and intense radiation of space. [music] Remember when we said earlier that these species can survive the harshest conditions on Earth and beyond? It wasn't an exaggeration, and now [music] you understand why. And it's exactly why NASA and its partners sent water bears and bdelloid rotifers into orbit.
They've even been aboard the ISS, helping scientists understand how these animals handle microgravity, radiation, and stress. Not only that, but in 2007, the European Space Agency launched a bunch of tardigrades into low Earth orbit, completely exposed. No suit, no shield, floating in a vacuum.
They were blasted by cosmic radiation, UV light 1,000 times stronger than what hits [music] Earth's surface, and temperatures near absolute zero.
And when they came back, most of them woke up and reproduced despite the harsh conditions they were exposed to.
This ties into an old theory called panspermia, the idea that life didn't originate on Earth, but arrived here locked in space [music] dust or trapped inside a meteorite. Before, maybe it sounded like a fringe science, [music] but when organisms can brush off cosmic radiation, then it doesn't seem so far-fetched, does it?
What about humans? Does this mean we now fully understand the way hibernation works and are close to putting humans in [music] this state?
Sorry for spoiling it for you, but it still feels more like science fiction.
However, researching rotifers, water bears, and similar organisms can lead [music] to massive breakthroughs in other fields. Their resilience might be a blueprint, a blueprint for medicine, for reshaping what [music] it means to age, maybe even to pause life itself, or extend it.
>> [music] >> We're talking real, practical innovations, from better preservation of human organs for transplantation [music] to drugs that slow aging at the cellular level. And yes, maybe even cryogenic hibernation long enough to make interstellar [music] travel possible.
The whole internet is buzzing about an unusual discovery on Google Maps in Antarctica.
Southeast of Japan's Showa Station, someone noticed a giant door standing out in the icy landscape.
Some call it Bigfoot's vacation home, or a shuttle from Star Trek.
Others say it's a blown-off Boeing door that somehow ended up in the snow.
Scientists have a way less exciting explanation.
It looks like the so-called doorway is actually part of fast sea ice.
It floats near the coast where the water is shallow and islands are scattered around.
This spot could simply be an iceberg that got stuck and is slowly melting right where it is.
You can see other icebergs nearby in the same area.
Ice flowing around a solid underwater rock could have formed a natural pattern.
The ice is pretty thin here [music] and because of the rocks underneath, the ice forms unique shapes.
Geologists add that the mysterious find is just a rocky ridge sticking up because the ice level has dropped a bit.
The top of it is the ridge and the sides [music] are two snow tails, long streaks of snow shaped by the wind.
These snow tails show which direction the wind usually blows [music] in this area.
The previous mysterious Google Maps find in Antarctica was a pyramid that turned out to be a mountain.
You can easily find it if you scroll all the way to the Ellsworth Mountains.
It's the tallest mountain range in Antarctica [music] and it stretches for almost 250 miles.
It's not the first pyramid on this continent as explorers from the British Antarctic Expedition found another unusually shaped mountain and nicknamed [music] it the pyramid.
But this one didn't have a pyramid shape after all. So no, there are no pyramids in Antarctica. [music] Sorry to ruin it for you.
In 2011, scientists from Chile found a strange fossil in Antarctica that looked like a squashed football.
It received the nickname the thing because it looked like something from a science fiction movie.
It turned out [music] it was a giant soft-shell egg from around 66 million years ago.
>> [music] >> It was more than 11 inches long and 7 inches wide. The only bigger egg ever found was of the extinct Madagascan elephant bird, which was 1 and 1/2 times as tall as Michael Jordan.
The Antarctic egg is also special because it's the first fossil egg ever found in this part of the world. So, whoever left it there must have been huge, probably a giant sea reptile that lived long ago, like a mosasaur.
This is surprising because most scientists thought these creatures didn't even lay eggs.
The egg is also unique because it has a thin eggshell and no pores, [music] which is totally different from most dinosaur eggs.
Scientists did a lot of work and studied 259 types of living reptiles, like lizards and snakes and their eggs.
From this, they figured out that the creature who laid the egg was probably at least 23 ft long, not counting her tail.
During the late Cretaceous [music] period, this part of Antarctica must have served as their nursery.
Paleontologists [music] have found bones of tiny mosasaurs and plesiosaurs in the same area, as well as bones from the grown-up ones.
If you've ever lost your ID and still can't find it, try looking under the Antarctic ice.
Well, at least it worked for a man who was reunited with his security access card after 21 years.
Rod Budd, a technician studying sea life on the Antarctic seafloor, spotted the card while he was diving at a place called Cape Evans.
Rod thought it might be a credit card, so he put it in his pocket and kept working.
When he took a closer look, he realized it actually belonged to someone named David McCar.
The card stayed with the research institute where Rod worked for eight more years until they finally managed to find David.
It turned out that he had never been to Antarctica.
In 2003, someone broke into his car in Wellington, New Zealand, and they tossed the contents of his briefcase into the harbor.
So, the card traveled over 2,400 mi in 13 years.
There aren't even ocean currents that move directly from Wellington to Cape Evans.
If the card went through different ocean currents, the journey would take around 1,000 years.
So, maybe it got attached to something else that could float more easily, like a piece [music] of debris or a plant that can grow on objects and make them buoyant.
Or, maybe the person who took David's briefcase was on a ship that went to Antarctica.
Or, the card somehow stuck to the bottom of a research boat that ended up there.
In case you want to see probably the coolest find from Antarctica, you got to head to the 2025 World Expo in Osaka, Japan.
They'll display a meteorite the size of a rugby ball that came all the way from Mars.
A Japanese research team found it in Antarctica in the year 2000.
They believe a massive asteroid impact blasted [snorts] the meteorite off its home planet before it traveled through space and landed on Earth.
It's one of the largest Mars meteorites ever found, weighing 28 lb.
Scientists studied the gas inside the rock to confirm it's from Mars, and they also found special minerals inside that form when water is present. This means Mars likely had water a long time ago.
So, studying the rock may help us learn more about whether life could have existed on the red planet.
A team of sound experts found a huge underwater canyon in Antarctica thanks to bad weather.
They had to pause their work at the Casey Research Station.
Instead of waiting around, they decided to use the unexpected free time to map the seafloor near Adams Glacier.
And that's how they found a canyon that is almost 7,000 ft deep, almost 30,000 ft wide, and stretches over 28 miles away from the glacier.
The icebreaker they were on uses a special tool called a multi-beam echo sounder.
It sends out sound waves in a fan shape under the ship, then listens for the echoes to create a detailed map of the ocean floor.
During the mapping, they discovered just part of the canyon before they had to return to the research station.
But when bad weather returned, the ship went back and mapped even more of it.
They were working among waves up to 13 ft high and winds up to 50 knots, but they still managed to get about 15 hours of data to complete their map.
On their way back to Australia, they stopped one last time to fill in any missing spots on the map.
This advanced mapping technology is helping scientists learn more about the history of glaciers and ocean interactions [music] in Antarctica.
A scientist was browsing through satellite images for brown trails of penguin droppings [music] and found four new colonies of emperor penguins in Antarctica.
This means there are now 66 breeding colonies for this vulnerable species.
These new colonies likely have been around for years, though they're mostly small with fewer than a thousand pairs of breeding penguins each.
Some of these colonies are close to other penguin areas, like the one that's not far from an old research station that never reported penguins nearby.
One of the new colonies was found close to a place called the Lazarev Ice Shelf, >> [music] >> where there used to be a larger penguin colony.
They thought this colony went extinct in 2019, but it seems the penguins have just moved a bit because of [music] changing sea ice conditions.
If we add the newly found penguins to the total population of this breed, it doesn't change the picture a lot. But it can help scientists see how emperor penguins adapt [music] to the changing conditions.
Divers have found [music] something incredible in a Florida sinkhole, and it was Stop. We need to leave a warning here.
You're about to hear some pretty unusual scientific information. This knowledge [music] will make you the smarty pants in your friend group.
But, there's also a risk that they'll look at you as a nerd. So, perhaps it would be [music] better for you to keep this knowledge a secret. In any case, it won't be superfluous.
So, you know that scientists divide the history of our planet [music] not only by time periods, but also by which animals lived at a certain time.
For example, 2,000 years ago Earth was inhabited by the blobfish, and scientists called [music] this time the blobfish period. It's a joke. There's never been such a period, but you get the gist.
The period between about 419.2 million and 358.9 [music] million years ago is called the Devonian period or the age of fish. Do you know why? Because the first fish began to appear on the planet.
The Paleogene is the period of large mammals. The famous Jurassic period marks the appearance of giant dinosaurs, which we often see in the movies.
Even now, we live in a certain period called [music] the Quaternary period. It began about 2.6 million years ago and continues to this day.
This is the time of humans and modern animals. So, the next time somebody asks you what [music] time it is, you can just answer, "It's the Quaternary period."
In short, the names of these periods depend more on what creatures [music] inhabit the planet.
The longest period is the Precambrian period or age of early life, the time when life on the planet started to form.
>> [music] >> Soft-bodied worms and jellyfish swam in the ocean, while microorganisms lived on land.
This period occupies almost 90% of the [music] Earth's total geological time.
It started about 4.5 billion years ago and ended 540 million years ago.
Oh, it's still a video about divers, don't forget. We'll get back to them soon.
>> [music] >> Considering all these periods, do you know which one is of the most poorly studied?
A period about which scientists know almost nothing, especially about the animals that lived [music] at that time.
This is the Irvingtonian North American Land Mammal Age.
It lasted from about 1.6 million to 250,000 years ago.
Scientists have very few fossils that belong to this time, but recently everything has changed.
In the USA, there's the Steinhatchee River, which stretches [music] for several tens of miles in the area of Big Bend, Florida. And just 500,000 years ago, there was a sinkhole instead [music] of the river.
This is a hole in the ground that forms when water dissolves the upper rock.
This rock is often limestone.
Sinkholes [music] appear in places with a lot of precipitation. Sometimes these [music] pits can be invisible. They look like ordinary ground, but the soil in them is loose and can easily collapse.
If you accidentally get into a sinkhole, people will hear your screams and help you.
But in the distant past, about half a million years ago, when animals got there, they couldn't get out of the pit.
So, it became their grave.
After many, many years, a river appeared here. And then, several fossil collectors decided to check out this place and discovered [music] a real paleontological treasure in it.
They plunged into the river and reached the bottom. There, in the murky water, they saw horse teeth sticking out of the sediment. It'd be pretty scary to find for many of us, but for these guys, it was the jackpot.
After the teeth, they found a hoof shaft and the skull of an unusual animal.
At that moment, the collectors realized they had made a major discovery.
Over the years, [music] the sinkhole at this place had been filled with sedimentary rocks.
Then, the river compacted all this mass, which made it possible to keep [music] everything inside the sinkhole in good condition.
Many animals got trapped in this pit half a million years ago, and only now have people managed to get them out.
More precisely, what's left of them.
>> [music] >> Divers have found more than 500 fossils belonging to ancient animals, including unknown species.
They got well-preserved bones of ancient horses, giant armadillos, [music] sloths, and a new species of tapir.
The Florida Museum [music] examined the remains and determined that they belonged to the poorly studied Irvingtonian North American land mammal [music] age. Most of all, scientists were struck by two finds in this collection.
The first was the remains of a giant armadillo-like [music] creature. And the second was the skull of an ancient tapir.
In case you didn't know, [music] this is a very cute pig-like mammal that has a short trunk like an elephant.
Divers in [music] Florida found the remains of a distant ancestor of this animal, which may be a new, [music] unknown species.
Most of the fossils in the sinkhole belong to early caballine horses, [music] a subgroup that includes modern domestic horses.
The remains of horses are so well preserved that scientists have seen signs of wear [music] on their teeth.
This will allow experts to understand the diet of these ancient creatures.
We often hear news [music] about people finding the remains of ancient animals or dinosaurs in caves, ravines, or at the bottom of [music] lakes.
But imagine if they found such remains in a museum.
It all started [music] in the early 2000s, north of the Florida border in southwest Georgia.
There was a mine where workers mined clay. [music] One day, they found the remains of some ancient animals and gave them to the Florida Museum of Natural History.
There, these remains lay in storage, waiting in the wings.
>> [music] >> And then one day, some guy started sorting them out and noticed a mysterious vertebra of an unknown animal.
This little [music] grab caught the guy's attention, so he returned to it over and over again.
He studied it, [music] trying to figure out what species the bone belonged to.
One day, he realized the bone belonged to an unknown extinct lizard species [music] that looked like a tegu.
You've probably seen these predatory creatures that look like monitor lizards.
So, [music] the age of the bone was about 15 to 17 million years old.
Let's wrap up our video with something weird.
You see this piece of amber colored stone [music] with stripes? Or is it not the stone? It looks like an ancient seashell. So, right now, you're looking at the oldest fossil in history.
It's a stromatolite, and its age is you won't believe it. Make a guess.
100 million years? 500 million years? 1 billion?
No. This fossil is [music] about 3.4 billion years old. It represents one of the earliest forms of life on Earth. No, not the stone [music] itself.
Stromatolite is just a playground. The early form of life here is these thin strips. They're called cyanobacteria, tiny single-celled creatures.
Okay, what about the remains of something bigger?
>> [music] >> Some ancient animals, for example?
Meet the trilobites.
They lived here during the Cambrian period, which began about [music] 500 million years ago.
This is the time when many invertebrates and fish began to appear.
Their exoskeletons helped the trilobites stay remarkably well preserved, considering their age.
They were arthropods that looked [music] like something between a spider, a scorpion, and a mutant from another galaxy.
These animals lived [music] for a very long time, and people find their remains almost all over the world.
They appeared at the very beginning [music] of the Cambrian period, survived it, and became extinct at the end of the Permian period. During the Permian mass extinction, when [music] about 90% of all living beings were wiped off the face of the Earth.
These creatures [music] swam in open water, burrowed into the seafloor, or crawled along it. They lived [music] like predators and scavengers.
The front of the animal was protected by a strong head shield.
It had crescent-shaped eyes and a calcified [music] plate on its lower body.
This plate covered its esophagus and mouth.
It had several pairs of legs growing from its body. The trilobite could also curl up into a ball like a woodlouse.
The Loch Ness Monster >> [music] >> is actually not from Scotland. Turns out this real-life creature lived in the freezing waters of Antarctica about 70 million years ago.
In 2019, researchers discovered fossils of a huge prehistoric marine reptile that looked a lot like what people described as Nessie.
This beast was terrifying, measuring up to 36 ft long with a massive giraffe-like neck. It also weighed around 15 tons, which is about the size of three elephants.
Next up on our list of huge animals is a penguin.
I know penguins aren't exactly what you'd call big, but scientists have just found what they think might be the biggest penguin ever. The Kumimanu fordycei. It's believed that these giant birds were hanging around New Zealand about 55 million years ago, and they were huge, weighing over 330 lb. That's about five times the size of the emperor penguins, which are considered the largest penguins alive today.
Now, let's move on from massive creatures to something much smaller.
Meet B Manfredi Schmitzi, a great ape that lived around 12 million years ago in what is now Germany.
This creature is very special as it's the tiniest great ape ever discovered.
[music] And when I say tiny, I really mean it.
These ancient animals only weighed about 22 lb.
They were basically no bigger than a super chunky cat.
If you think small creatures aren't scary, wait until you meet the electric blue tarantula.
This newly discovered species from Thailand's mangroves has an almost otherworldly electric blue color.
Its vibrant hue doesn't come from pigment. It is actually caused by the unique structure of its hair, which reflects blue light, making it look like an extraterrestrial being.
We're going even further now, diving into the freezing pitch black depths.
At around 2,000 ft deep in the Andaman Sea, scientists found a new species of ghost shark, which they named Chimaera supae.
Their appearance is straight out of a horror movie. They have sleek pale bodies, frills that look like feathers, and large creepy eyes.
These ghost sharks aren't actually sharks, but they are related, having diverged from their cousins about 400 million years ago.
The good news is they're not [music] too scary since they're only a bit bigger than a shoe box.
Just when you think we can't find stranger creatures, we come across this ancient amphibian from Brazil.
Scientifically known as K. rosai, this newly discovered giant crocodile-like creature lived during the Triassic period over 240 million years ago.
At nearly 10 ft long, it had a powerful jaw, resembling the modern-day alligator.
This beast was definitely a survivor since it adapted to the most severe conditions ever seen on the planet.
Last year, scientists were tracking the dense Amazon rainforest at night when they found some quirky orange spiders that looked like they were wearing black boots.
The team soon discovered it was a new type of giant crab spider, and no, they don't look like crabs at all. They only got their name because, well, perched on [music] plants, these spiders spread their legs out to the sides, just like crabs.
Do you know that some new species are named after celebrities?
Hollywood icon Harrison Ford now has his very own snake, for example. Discovered in Peru, T. Harrisoni honors the actor famous for his role as Indiana Jones, an archaeologist with a notorious fear of snakes.
Unlike the film's menacing serpents, >> [music] >> this new snake species is quite modest in size, measuring about 16 in long.
We also have the Rhampholeon princei, a small new species of pygmy chameleon from Tanzania that was named after US rapper and poet [music] Prince Ea.
He received this honor because of his work raising awareness about global environmental issues.
Another celebrity namesake is DiCaprio's snail-eating snake, which hangs out in the shrubs of Panama's forests.
This S. ermelindae caprioae [music] is about 15 in long and spends its nights on palm fronds looking for snails and slugs.
Its round eyes look like glowing coals that can be a bit scary, but overall, the creature is super chill. Even when it feels threatened, it doesn't bite. It just coils up around its head and gives off a really bad smell.
Now, something a bit more sinister. Meet Venomius tomhardyi. Does that name ring a bell?
Exactly. This new species of spider was named after Tom Hardy's portrayal of the infamous [music] Marvel character Venom.
And all because the black spots on the spider's abdomen reminded researchers of the famous [music] anti-hero.
Most spiders of this species were found in Australia at night sitting in their elaborate webs in forested [music] areas near the coast. When disturbed, these creepy crawlers often hide in silk-lined hollows in tree branches.
We've also got something for the Lord of [music] the Rings fans. In the vast and warm waters of the Amazon River, scientists have just discovered a new species of pacu. This fish is a relative of the terrifying piranha with a plant-based diet [music] and human-like teeth.
It was named Myloplus sauron because of a bold vertical black mark on its side, which reminded researchers of the fiery eye symbol [music] of the villain Sauron from Tolkien's epic saga.
Wait, is that [music] a tanned capybara or a wild dog? Well, actually, it's neither. This is a newly discovered dwarf [music] deer.
This tiny creature, about the size of a basset hound, scurries [music] through the forests of Peru.
The combo of large eyes, stocky body, and short legs makes this animal simply adorable.
This cute little deer is the complete opposite of [music] what we've got coming up next.
This bizarre-looking creature is what we believe the beast [music] of five teeth might have looked like.
Its fossils, found in Chilean Patagonia, showed that it lived during the age of dinosaurs, >> [music] >> about 72 million years ago.
This finding is just another piece of evidence that mammals had been roaming around that part of South America much earlier than we thought. Moving from the forests of South America to the deserts [music] of Australia, we come across a sand dragon lizard, known scientifically as Ctenophorus tjalkurri. With its sandy color and long lean body, this lizard looks like it could star in a Dune movie. Discovered last year, this sand dragon lizard blends in perfectly with the hot sands of the Great Victoria Desert [music] in Southern Australia.
For over 10 years, a large-eyed creature managed to hide from scientists who [music] ventured into the mountains of southwestern China, but not this time.
In 2023, the group finally managed to take photos of seven frogs that didn't match any known species. They're now known as Leshan Odorous Frogs, a species that grows to be about 2 in long and has small [music] bumps all over their grass-green bodies. Off the coast of Chile, we have recently found a seamount nearly four times as high as the Burj Khalifa. Underwater mountains [music] are usually home to beautiful life forms, like sponge gardens and ancient corals. But this Chilean seamount also hid a creature known as the [music] flying spaghetti monster.
It's a rare type of squid with long noodle-like tentacles that make it look like an underwater pasta dish.
Including its tentacles, this strange [music] creature can be over 130 ft long. Recently, scientists were diving into the cold waters of the Antarctic Peninsula when they thought they had found an ordinary dragonfish swimming by.
But, there was something unusual about this one.
It turned out that this fish had [music] two darker vertical stripes along its slender body.
That's when they realized they were looking at a new species, [music] the banded dragonfish. From bizarre sea creatures to a cute one.
In 2017, locals were diving near Kume Island in Japan when they found the skeleton panda sea squirt.
This deep-sea oddity quickly won people over with its look because [music] its black spots actually resemble a panda bear's eyes and ears.
At least if you have a good imagination.
This unusual creature filters water to catch its food >> [music] >> and is yet another reminder of the ocean's hidden wonders.
Antarctica [music] wasn't always a frozen wasteland.
A long time ago, it was full of life and [music] 56 million years ago, something terrifying stalked its jungles.
A giant flesh-eating bird.
It was around 6 ft tall and weighed as much as a lion.
For millions of years, nothing could challenge it. So, why did it disappear?
And could there be even bigger predators still hidden beneath the ice?
Paleontologists found two massive claw bones in Antarctica, sharp, curved, and [music] powerful, belonging to this bird.
They were dug up from the Eocene aged rocks of Seymour Island, which means they're around 40 to 50 million years old.
Their shape left no doubt. These were the so-called terror birds.
Their scientific name is Phorusrhacidae, some of the most fearsome predators to ever walk the earth.
They were flightless and didn't even need wings. Instead, they could sprint at breakneck speeds like ostriches from a nightmare.
For millions of years, these birds ruled South America.
But now, for the first time, their presence has been confirmed in Antarctica. [music] Not a surprise here. Back then, South America and Antarctica were [music] still connected, allowing animals to easily commute between continents. So, these birds probably migrated south to adapt [music] to life on Antarctica's prehistoric landmass.
It didn't just survive here, it [music] thrived. But at some point, this nightmare of an animal vanished.
Why?
Most likely because of the temperature changes. Antarctica was cooling, >> [music] >> slowly turning into the frozen wasteland we know today.
Its prey may have declined, leaving the predator without enough food.
Eventually, it disappeared, leaving no descendants behind.
Researchers hope that [music] they'll find a complete skeleton eventually.
They're also wondering where there might be even bigger species waiting [music] to be discovered. Perhaps these birds evolved into a completely new Antarctic lineage.
But for now, all we have are two giant creepy claws.
People often think that there are almost no animals or plants in Antarctica. But that's not true at all.
Penguins [music] waddle around, and forget the cute tiny ones. Antarctica used to have 6-ft tall monsters.
The emperor penguins are the largest penguin species alive today.
They can dive over 1,800 ft deep and hold their breath for over 20 minutes.
There were giant [music] ancient penguins around 38 million years ago.
They were the size of humans.
Fossils show they had long sharp beaks, making them terrifying hunters of fish and squid.
The fish there are also [music] absolutely fascinating.
Forget giant squids, colossal squids are nightmares even bigger. Some reach over 40 ft long with massive super sharp beaks and eyes the size of dinner plates.
Finally, orcas, the apex predators of the Antarctic Ocean.
They hunt in packs, working together like a wolf pack of the sea to take down seals, fish, and even massive whales.
>> [music] >> There are even tiny plants like moss and algae.
Antarctic hair grass and pearlwort, they somehow survive against all odds.
There are many other myths going on about Antarctica. For example, some people think that when icebergs break off from glaciers, they immediately start drifting straight into the open ocean until they melt. But the reality is way more chaotic.
First, when an iceberg breaks off from a glacier or ice shelf, it has to deal with underwater obstacles. It can stay stuck on the seafloor for decades without moving.
Then, they get caught in powerful whirlpools and spin in place for months.
One iceberg, a 23A, spent nearly 40 years frozen in place before finally breaking free. Only to get caught in a swirling ocean vortex for another 8 months.
After that, their paths are influenced by ocean currents, tides, winds, and even underwater topography.
They don't just float freely. Their movements are full of literal unexpected twists.
And speaking [music] of glaciers, another strange rumor is that some humans can't travel more than 311 miles [music] inland in Antarctica because of an impassable ice wall, freezing jet fuel, deadly winds, and no oxygen.
But this is completely false.
Antarctica has been explored by planes, vehicles, and even scientists on foot.
There's an entire research station sitting at the South Pole.
People live there all year long.
The ice wall is [music] real, a massive ice cliff rising above the ocean. But that isn't some secret barrier. It's an ice shelf.
These are thick slabs of ice that form when glaciers slowly flow off the land [music] and spread over the ocean.
Almost 3/4 of Antarctica's coastline is made up of them. But they don't form some giant ring around the world.
Antarctica is one of the most extreme places on Earth, but we've conquered its challenges, and we keep learning more about it every year.
That's why every year millions of dollars are poured into keeping research [music] stations running, protecting wildlife, and making sure the people who live there have everything [music] they need.
But where does all this money go?
Well, Antarctica stations are basically small cities.
There's electricity, heating, water purification, [music] food storage, and medical facilities.
The biggest station, McMurdo, is basically a town with over 1,000 people in summer. It has everything [music] from a fire station to a gym.
The South Pole station is super deep inland, so it's one of the hardest places to supply. Getting food and fuel there requires airplanes flying thousands of miles in extreme cold.
But the internet loves a good mystery.
When Google Maps revealed what looked like a massive doorway in Antarctica, conspiracy theorists went wild. People joked about everything from Bigfoot's vacation home to a secret [music] base, or even a Star Trek spaceship hanger hidden in the ice.
But there's a way simpler and less exciting explanation. It's actually a grounded iceberg.
A chunk of ice that got stuck in shallow water and is now slowly melting.
As ice moves across the landscape, it flows around bumps and obstacles, creating odd shapes. The process of melting, breaking apart, and refreezing can carve ice into unexpected forms.
Antarctica also has incredibly strong downward blowing winds that sculpt ice into dramatic formations over time.
No secret doorway, unfortunately.
And speaking of doors, for years, Ushuaia, Argentina, has been [music] called the gateway to Antarctica.
The last stop before the icy continent.
The place where expeditions begin.
But there's another option.
Punta Arenas, Chile.
Let's compare them.
Ushuaia is closer to Antarctica. It's a top departure point for tourists going on cruises.
But no regular flights to Antarctica.
No major scientific bases operating from here.
It's basically controlled by the military, which refuses to allow private flights. Only commercially operated ships.
Yes, Punta Arenas is further from Antarctica, but 22 countries and global organizations use it [music] as their main base.
There are regular flights to Antarctica happening there every year. Private airlines can actually operate here, making it the real air connection to Antarctica.
Ushuaia may have the best location physically, but Punta Arenas actually runs the show.
Argentina made a huge error in picking its Antarctic airbase. Instead of setting up a simple, accessible base at sea [music] level, they built Marambio base very high on rough terrain, completely impossible to reach by land. Everything has to be flown in by helicopter, making operations slow, expensive, and frustrating.
For 50 years, Argentina stubbornly [music] stuck to this bad decision.
While Chile set up efficient, well-planned bases that the world now uses.
If things don't [music] change, Ushuaia will be nothing more than a tourist stop.
But what's terrifying is that Antarctica seems to be returning to its past. It's supposed to be the coldest place on Earth, but something shocking happened just recently. For the first time in recorded history, temperatures in Antarctica broke 68° F.
This continent is buried under miles of ice.
Usually, temperatures there can drop to minus 112° but in the winter of 2020, scientists recorded an insane 69° on Seymour Island, hotter than many places in Europe at that time.
Scientists believe there are several reasons for that. First, there are changes in the way heat moves around the [music] planet's waters.
Second, melting permafrost due to the planet warming.
It looks like the climate is changing faster than expected.
Scientists just drilled through about 1,700 ft of Antarctic ice and pulled up a record-breaking core. [music] It's a 750-ft tube that reaches back about 23 million years.
The core showed that this part of West Antarctica had [music] been an open ocean back then. That means the ice sheet had collapsed before.
And if it sinks again, [music] global sea levels could rise enough to turn coastal cities into aquariums and rewrite the map of the world.
To learn more, an international research team set up camp at a spot called Crary Ice Rise.
It's like a giant [music] frozen raft stuck to Antarctica, caught on rocky bumps on the seafloor.
Those bumps act like a brake, helping hold back the inland ice.
>> [music] >> But warmer ocean water is starting to melt the raft from below.
If the ice thins and lifts off those rocks, the brakes are gone and the inland ice is going straight into the ocean. That is why scientists decided to drill here.
Drilling a straight hole through a third of a mile of ice sounds impossible. It can't be done with a regular drill.
Instead, the crew had to use a custom hot water drill.
It's basically [music] a superheated pressure washer.
It shoots near boiling water straight down to melt a vertical tunnel about 1-ft wide. The problem is the [music] ice tries to heal the hole shut. The continent itself is saying, "Nope."
If the hot water [music] stops flowing for even a little bit, the tunnel starts freezing again and the hole begins to close.
And since they were in the middle of a frozen wasteland, they had to set up a small [music] camp of tents with its own power supply.
The nearest station is about 450 mi away, so any serious breakdown could mess with the whole project.
For comparison, the space station is about 250 mi above Earth's surface.
So this expedition had to be planned almost like a space mission.
Granted, the ISS is still harder to reach, but you get the point.
If the camp lost power, >> [screaming] >> the researchers would have to fix it fast, within 1 or 2 days, or the hole could freeze shut completely.
You might already know that ice can trap ancient microbes and particles from the air.
Snow falls, freezes, and stacks up in layers. Each layer traps whatever was floating around at the time. Stuff like dust or gases, even tiny organisms.
That's how scientists read the past.
Those stacked layers are called ice cores.
But the researchers weren't after the ice.
What scientists recovered there is a sediment core.
Instead of frozen snow, it's a long tube of mud and rock drilled from the ocean floor under the ice.
Think of it like this. Ice cores record what was in the air. Sediment cores record what was happening in the ocean.
Everything floating in the water eventually sinks. When a massive ceiling of thick ice completely covers the ocean, the water below goes pitch black.
Without sunlight, there's no way for plants to grow. The only stuff sinking to the seafloor is heavily crushed rock.
Physically scraped off the land by the moving ice above.
When the climate warms, the ice pulls back and sunlight brings back life. The seafloor starts building the open water layer again.
Over time, you get a repeating pattern.
Gritty rock when it's iced over, pale shell-packed mud when it isn't. It's like Earth creating a barcode for scientists to find.
When the drilling crew finally cracked open their giant tube of dirt, the mud was filled [music] with marine fossils.
The physical remains of ancient ocean bugs.
And those specific bugs absolutely require [music] sunlight to survive.
Their entire food chain runs on big algae blooms at the ocean surface. So, finding them is big proof that under warmer conditions, the ice pulled back completely.
The total disappearance is the scary part about [music] how West Antarctica behaves.
The ice doesn't simply melt away inch by inch in a slow, predictable way. It has a built-in [music] tipping point.
Finding those deep sea fossils suggest that once the ocean gets warm enough to lift the ice and release that rocky parking brake, the whole frozen raft can suffer a full system failure.
It might basically vacate the premises, and that kind of collapse is what makes scientists nervous.
Researchers call this one-way behavior hysteresis.
This is Billy. He's sitting on a sled at the top of a snowy hill. The sled is pointed downhill, but Billy isn't moving yet because the snow is still holding him in place.
Then someone gives the sled a tiny push.
At first, [music] it's just a slow creep. But once the runner starts sliding, gravity takes over and the sled picks up speed on its own.
The key part is that even if the person who pushed Billy instantly regrets it, the sled won't stop.
Huge ice sheets can work the same way.
Push the planet past a certain temperature line and the retreat can keep going on its own.
Even if temperatures drop again centuries later, the melting doesn't automatically slam on the brakes.
So scientists are trying to figure out how much warmer it has to get for West Antarctica to enter that locked-in mode.
One estimate says the danger zone starts at about 3.6° [music] F above the global average temperature in the mid-1800s.
They still can't say that's the exact flip point or give a clean countdown.
That's what this core is meant to help confirm.
But the ice isn't only getting hit from the outside by warmer water.
>> [music] >> Parts of Antarctica get heat from below, too.
Near the Ross Ice Shelf sits Ross Island.
And on it, an active volcano. It's called Mount Erebus.
It rises about 12,400 ft above sea level, and it's the southernmost active volcano on Earth. But the cool part is that inside its summit crater is a persistent lava lake.
An actual glowing pool of molten rock that's been churning for decades.
That's not normal. Only a handful of volcanoes on Earth maintain long-lived lava lakes. Erebus does it while surrounded by one of the coldest environments on the planet.
Antarctica can be brutally [music] cold at the surface, but Mount Erebus is powered by heat from deep inside the Earth.
That heat doesn't care if the air above is -40° Fahrenheit. Magma rises because it's hot and buoyant.
As long as fresh magma keeps feeding the crater and gas keeps escaping, the lava lake can stay molten.
Erebus also creates something you rarely see elsewhere.
Ice towers [music] built by a volcano.
Hot gases escape through cracks, hitting the freezing air and instantly solidify into tall, hollow chimneys of ice.
Some of the caves inside those towers can be surprisingly warm compared to the outside air, creating strange little pockets where microbial life can survive in the dark.
Another cool thing about this region is the miles of subglacial lakes.
Some are the size [music] of small cities.
Pressure helps keep them liquid and heat from below keeps them from freezing. A bunch of them connect through hidden channels, so they fill and drain like an underground plumbing system. [music] Satellites can even catch the ice above rising and falling as the water moves.
Erebus matters [music] because it proves West Antarctica can get heat from below.
That heat can melt the ice at the base and create [music] water underneath.
Those buried lakes matter because that water acts like lubrication.
Less friction means the ice can slide faster.
And when lakes fill and drain, that slippery layer can shift around suddenly.
When grip and [music] support both weaken at the same time, that sled doesn't need much of a push.
There's no doomsday [music] clock on the wall counting down to some dramatic end of the world.
Even if [music] West Antarctica starts sliding into the ocean, it wouldn't happen overnight.
Coastlines would shift [music] inch by inch, one storm at a time, with decades in between.
Cities wouldn't vanish with a single wave.
We'd have to do [music] a lot of redesigning and moving. And centuries from now, if parts of today's coastlines sit [music] underwater, future divers might swim past the tops of skyscrapers the way we dive through ancient shipwrecks.
Giant vase-like sponges, otherworldly jellyfish, segmented worms covered with bristles, and large octopuses are the newest Antarctica discovery.
Scientists found them after a giant iceberg had broken away, and it turned out to be a treasury of ancient [music] life under ice.
In January 2025, a huge iceberg the size of Chicago called [music] A-84 broke off from Antarctica's George the Sixth Ice Shelf, which is a large ice shelf about 280 miles long, 12 [music] to 43 miles wide, and around 820 ft thick.
In the summer, which lasts from November to late February, the ice shelf melt at the surface, [music] and meltwater ribbon lakes form.
They're elongated and ribbon-like.
[music] That's how they got their name.
Anyway, when the iceberg floated away, it left part of the ocean floor wide open, and it was a spot no one had ever seen before.
Scientists on the research ship Falkor 2 were nearby in the Bellingshausen Sea.
As soon as they heard about the iceberg, they immediately changed their plans.
They understood that it was a super rare chance [music] to check out something unknown and amazing. Like lifting a rock in the forest to see what's hiding underneath.
The researchers used an underwater robot named Subastian and explored the deep sea [music] for eight days. They went as deep as over 4,200 ft.
>> [music] >> Down there, they found a hidden ecosystem. There were big corals and sponges literally packed with sea animals. A whole world under the ice.
The researchers thought they'd find some life down there, >> [music] >> but they didn't expect to see so much.
And this underwater ancient life wasn't just surviving.
>> [music] >> It had been thriving in that harsh icy place for a really long time.
Anemones that looked like fluffy little trees, sea spiders, [music] ice fish, octopuses.
The research was live streamed to scientists from all over the world.
>> [music] >> And those live streams are actually in open access.
The coolest thing was that some discovered creatures seem to be new species.
Yes, there are probably [music] new species in Antarctica in 2025.
And some might only live in this region.
That's because Antarctica isn't just really far away. It's been cut off from the rest of the world for millions of years.
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current surrounds it like a big water moat surrounding a castle. But even if it turns out [music] that those species are not new, the scientists have still found snails, worms with bristles, crustaceans like tiny crabs and shrimp, and a species of the phantom jellyfish. Those are super rare and look otherworldly.
Their official name is too complicated, [music] so let's just call them the giant phantom jelly.
This jellyfish is huge. Its bell, the round umbrella part on top, can be more than 3 ft wide. It has four long arms that trail behind it. Each one is long as 33 ft, about as long as a school bus.
Scientists first caught one way back in 1899, but it took them 60 years to realize it was a totally new kind of jellyfish.
The phantom jellyfish has a see-through purplish body that looks kind of ghostly.
Instead of normal jellyfish tentacles, it has these [music] ribbon-like arms that help it catch food and pull it into its mouth right in the middle. [music] Even though jellyfish don't have brains like we do, researchers watching the giant phantom jelly noticed something surprising. The otherworldly creature seemed to move its arms very carefully and with control, especially when swimming through tight spaces on the seafloor.
It looked like it was being very cautious and deliberate. Uh, creepy.
Another sentient being?
Jellyfish have a simple nerve net instead of a brain, which helps them sense the world around them.
>> [music] >> But the way this phantom jelly moved made scientists think it might be smarter or more coordinated than other jellyfish.
Studying it [music] can help scientists learn how animals without brains still manage to explore and survive in tricky places underwater.
Another cool find was little worms called bristle worms.
Scientists call them polychaetes, but let's stick with bristle worms because it [music] kind of sounds fun.
Lots of different kinds of them live in super cold deep [music] parts of the ocean.
Bristle worms have bodies made of many segments, and they have tiny little bristles all along their sides.
These bristles help them move around, feel what's near them, and even protect [music] themselves from danger.
One cool example is the Antarctic scale worm. It's a type of bristle worm that lives in really cold, deep waters [music] and has shiny, golden bristles that make it look pretty fancy.
During Antarctic deep-sea exploration, the team also found giant sponges shaped like [music] bases.
Usually, sponges grow very slowly. So, to get that huge, they must have been growing there for a really long time, maybe even hundreds of years.
Their size shows that the deep-sea animals living around them didn't just move in recently.
>> [music] >> Those sea creatures have been there for decades and managed to form thriving communities under the ice.
So, >> [music] >> it really was ancient life hiding under all that ice.
And that surprised scientists a lot.
>> [music] >> In older studies, people used to drop cameras through holes in the ice or visit [music] ice berg areas long after the ice had broken off to explore hidden ecosystems.
Back then, [music] they mostly saw bare, empty seafloor with just a few living things. But this time, [music] the team arrived just weeks after the giant iceberg broke away. And they got to see what was hiding right underneath it.
The first 9 miles behind the ice shelf can hide rich and busy ecosystems. The area is dark, cold, and hidden for ages, and still all kinds of creatures live there.
This shows that life can survive in places that seem too harsh or frozen for anything to live.
On the other hand, finding all this life down there isn't super surprising.
Lots of animals live in dark, [music] cold places underwater, so it makes sense that they'd be under the ice shelf, too.
The ice [music] kind of hides them and keeps them safe from anything going on above.
But what's weird is how many different kinds of creatures live there, even though [music] it used to be a really closed-off space.
It actually looks a lot like the seabed in parts of Antarctica that don't have ice on top.
>> [music] >> How can that be?
Usually, tiny plants called phytoplankton grow near the surface where sunlight hits. Little shrimp-like animals called krill eat those plants at night.
When krill get full, they sink down and bring [music] food and nutrients to the ocean floor. Even their waste helps feed the deep-sea creatures.
But if there's a huge ice cap above, sunlight can't [music] get through. So, no plants can grow there, and no krill bring food down that way.
Scientists thought this would mean less food and fewer animals down there, but they found a lot of life anyway. [music] Turns out food and nutrients probably sneak in under the ice, carried by underwater currents, >> [music] >> kind of like rivers flowing under the ocean.
Scientists found some animals that lived a long time. So, it looks like those currents, which mostly come from melting glacier water, bring enough [music] food to keep the ecosystem healthy and full of life.
No one really knows what's going to happen to all that deep-sea life now that the iceberg has floated away.
Those creatures have lived under the thick ice for who knows how long in super stable, pitch-black [music] conditions.
Obviously, they're not exactly fans of change. So, losing that icy roof might totally mess with their whole setup.
One of the scientists mentioned that the ice shelf the iceberg came from has been creeping backward, like 25 miles over the last 50 years.
That's a part of a bigger pattern.
>> [music] >> Antarctica's ice is melting faster and faster, which pushes sea levels up around the world. That's why this Antarctica discovery matters.
The team's trying to figure out not just what's happening now, but how this hidden ecosystem fits into the bigger picture.
If we can understand how this place is changing over decades or even centuries, maybe we can predict what's coming next.
And it's pretty amazing that breaking ice can tell us so much, right?
In a frosty Canadian park, hidden deep beneath layers of thick ice, scientists discovered a bizarre skeleton they named the frozen dragon. The skeleton had [music] been in the frozen ice for millions of years. It took experts decades to work out the species of this strange fossil. It was identified as a new genus of pterosaur. Pterosaurs were massive [music] flying reptiles with wingspans of over 16 ft. Their heads were 3.5 times the size of their bodies.
[music] Pterosaurs lived 76 million years ago when they soared above the dinosaurs.
Scientists described them as the biggest, meanest, and most bizarre animals that ever flew. The new genus has been named Cryodrakon boreas, which translates to frozen dragon of the north winds.
In 2013, a young mountaineer was climbing one of the tallest mountains in Western Europe, Mont Blanc. He noticed [music] a strange metal box poking out of the snow. The mountaineer pried the box open and found that it was filled with precious rubies, emeralds, and sapphires. The [music] climber immediately handed the box to the authorities. It was discovered that the box likely belonged to a passenger on one of two flights from India that crashed into the mountain over 50 years ago. The box was valued to be worth over $200,000, and authorities are still searching for the [music] heir to the small box of treasures.
In northwest Siberia in 2007, a reindeer herder was on an outing with his sons when he noticed something strange in the ice. The man realized it was a frozen mammoth calf and immediately [music] contacted the local museum. The calf was named Lyuba and was the best preserved mammoth mummy in the world at the time of its discovery.
Lyuba had [music] been in the ice for 41,800 years and is around 30 to 35 days old.
From trunk to tail, the mammoth calf is roughly [music] the same size as a large calf. If you're interested in seeing for yourself, Lyuba travels to museums all around the world.
On the frozen continent of Antarctica, covered in layers of ice and snow, is Mount [music] Erebus, the frozen volcano. The volcano was discovered in the middle of an eruption in 1841 by explorers on an Arctic expedition. The volcano is over 12,000 ft tall and has been active [music] for the last 1.3 million years. Deep within the middle of the volcano is a huge crater filled with [music] large volumes of molten lava.
The volcano has occasional explosions, which means it's classified as being in continuing eruption. However, these eruptions are nothing to worry about because they're generally rather small.
Back in 1991, two hikers [music] were traveling across the Italian Alps when they stumbled across a body that they presumed to belong to a recently lost hiker. The duo trudged back down the mountain to report their unfortunate findings. Once the remains were recovered, it was clear that the body was not recent at all. Scientists [music] determined that the Iceman was more than 5,000 years old and named him Ötzi. The discovery was unlike anything scientists had ever before seen because the body was so well preserved. For years, Ötzi [music] was studied by scientists who discovered that our ancestors have a lot more in common with us than we ever knew before. Otzi was covered in ink [music] body art.
Research done on the contents of his stomach revealed that his last meal was dry-cured meat, [music] similar to the bacon we eat today. Otzi has at least 19 relatives living today, somewhere in Central Europe.
Scientists were researching ancient squirrel burrows in Siberia when they came across something [music] interesting. One of the squirrels had hidden away precious seeds deep beneath the ground. The seeds had been encased [music] in ice for 32,000 years.
The seeds were for the flower Silene stenophylla, [music] which had long since gone extinct.
Amazingly, scientists were able to recover plant tissue [music] from inside the seeds and grow an entire crop of flowers. They've since [music] reintroduced the previously extinct flower to natural habitats all across the world.
In 1930, a team of Norwegian scientists sailed around the Arctic Ocean conducting research on the seas and glaciers. They reached White Island, a dangerous and icy land no human had set foot on before, or so they thought. The scientists were shocked to discover the tip of a small boat sticking out of the snow. Frozen inside the boat, they found scientific equipment and various personal items, including a jacket monogrammed S.A. Andrée. They had discovered the wreck of the famous Andrée Arctic balloon expedition. In 1897, >> [music] >> Swedish explorers, led by Andrée, attempted to travel to the North Pole by hydrogen balloon. No one had ever heard from them ever again. People only found out what happened to them when the wreck was discovered 33 years later. It turns out that the balloon had crashed on White Island only two days after departing from Sweden, the explorers traveled along the island on [music] a small makeshift boat, but were unable to make it any further.
The best preserved woolly mammoth ever found was discovered in an area of permafrost in Siberia in 2010.
Scientists named the frozen mammoth Yuka after the small village near where it was found. Yuka had been frozen for 39,000 years and is thought to have been around 6 to 8 [music] years old. Because Yuka is so well preserved, it has been studied for years and provided new information [music] about mammoths. In 2019, scientists reported that they were able to activate cells taken from Yuka's tissue. Maybe one day >> [music] >> we'll have woolly mammoths roaming the land.
From looking at pictures and videos of Antarctica, the continent [music] appears to be freezing cold, covered in snow, and flat except for a few small hills.
Scientists believed that, too. When studying the Gamburtsev Mountains >> [music] >> in the early 2000s, they were shocked to discover that the small rocky hills were actually the peak of a gigantic mountain [music] formation under a mile of snow.
Using radar technology, researchers worked out that the mountains are really around 10,000 ft tall and sprawl across 750 mi. This is around the same size as the European Alps, except hidden under tons of ice and snow.
At a gold mine in Siberia, a businessman was examining a nearby river when he noticed something interesting in the frost. It was a small [music] woolly rhino calf that was later named Sasha.
The woolly rhino has been extinct for 15,000 years. It's thought that Sasha could have been frozen in the ice for up to 39,000 [music] years. Sasha is unique because it's the only full-body woolly rhino to have ever been discovered.
Glaciers [music] around the northern Italian town of Peio have begun to melt.
Artifacts from decades and even centuries ago have been discovered pouring out of the ice. Personal belongings from soldiers have been found. Things like diaries, photographs, and [music] even love letters.
Historians have even uncovered an entire cabin preserved beneath the ice. The cabin was filled with hard metal helmets and clothes. In 1845, [music] Sir John Franklin embarked on an ill-fated expedition to the North Pole.
The crew traveled on two ships, HMS Erebus and the ironically named HMS Terror. The expedition met with disaster [music] and both ships were lost to the icy waters.
In 2016, the HMS Terror was discovered by a team of researchers. Despite being lost [music] for 170 years, the freezing cold waters had maintained the ship in pristine condition. Scientists described the ship as frozen in time.
Dinner plates [music] and glasses were still on shelves. Beds and desks were still in order, and even the passengers' luggage appeared to be in good condition. The HMS Erebus was also discovered nearby, [music] but due to changing water conditions, the ship wasn't in great shape.
The glacial ice [music] surrounding a mountain passageway in Norway that was notoriously used by the Vikings has revealed hundreds of ancient artifacts.
One of these artifacts [music] was a giant unopened wooden box that was welded together. Researchers were beside themselves with anticipation patient [music] waiting to open this box. They believed it would be filled with Viking treasures or artifacts that would give us an insight into [music] ancient society. When they opened the box, all that was inside was a plain old beeswax [music] candle. It turns out that this box wasn't actually as old as they thought it was. By analyzing the candle, >> [music] >> they discovered that the box dates back to the 17th century. The age of the Vikings had ended [music] by the 11th century. It's likely that the candle box belonged to a farmer [music] who was shipping it from his summer farm to his winter farm to light up the long nights.
Many terrifying animals live deep beyond [music] the waves like this vampire squid living 3,000 ft below the surface in almost complete darkness. This animal has [music] a cloak like a vampire's.
That's why it's called the vampire squid.
Deep down [music] at the bottom, it can't use ink to defend itself. So, this animal has developed an unusual tactic.
It glows slightly to scare [music] away predators. If this tactic fails, the vampire squid can turn its body inside out revealing [music] tiny spikes.
When you translate its scientific name, Vampyroteuthis infernalis, it literally means vampire squid from the nether.
Despite its terrifying looks, it's a harmless [music] ocean animal.
This previous creature was not from space, >> [music] >> but this object definitely is.
Before Elon Musk found a way to reuse rockets, NASA would simply drop old ones after launching astronauts into space.
Most of the time in the ocean or deserts.
In 2012, Jeff Bezos launched a mission to [music] find the Apollo 11 rocket.
They found it by using sonar, but it was in terrible condition. It was sitting on the bottom of the ocean not far from the predicted site. [music] They were able to rescue the engine and reconstruct two of them.
The most famous lost city is Atlantis, >> [music] >> but sadly, we still haven't discovered it.
However, Heracleion was also just a myth until one British pilot saw something that looked like a city while flying over the Mediterranean Sea.
He reported it and 60 years later a group of divers went [music] there. They were shocked when they found an entire city underwater. It was loaded with artifacts that could tell us a lot about the history of the place.
Now it's one of the best underwater archaeological sites in the world. It's believed that the rising sea caused the whole city to go underwater.
The Titanic sank in 1912. The wreck was claimed to be officially discovered 74 years later.
In reality though, a fisherman found the Titanic 8 years earlier while fishing in the Atlantic Ocean.
He was pulling out his net when he spotted a head stuck in it. Luckily, it was just a doll's head. Years later after the fisher had passed away, his son sold the doll to a doll collector.
She did a lot of digging and research on every [music] person who had a porcelain doll on the Titanic. She found the owner of the doll.
Eva Hart was on the Titanic and had a doll with her.
Eva survived the catastrophe by a miracle, but her toy didn't.
Hart even wrote about the doll in her [music] journal and every detail matched the toy found by the fisherman.
The tripod [music] fish lives deep in the abyssal zone around 20,000 ft below the surface. [music] It's adapted to such immense depths and uses its tripod fins to stay still on the bottom.
This creature [music] doesn't have big eyes, but even if it did, these eyes would be useless in the darkness.
Instead, the [music] tripod fish uses its fins like antennas to detect any movement in the water.
This creature doesn't have much luck when it comes [music] to its love life, so it had to develop unique tactics to reproduce.
One fish can [music] be both male and female.
The next bizarre creature is the lizardfish. It has tons of razor-sharp teeth, a huge mouth, and really big eyes, which it uses for hunting.
All this makes the animal look freaky.
The lizardfish lives at [music] depths of around 11,000 ft in the midnight zone, where there is zero light.
>> [music] >> This freak of nature basically eats everything it can fit inside its mouth, >> [music] >> from small fish to other lizardfish. On the other hand, when they see other reptile fish, they probably fall [music] in love instead, because finding mates at those depths is not an easy task.
Like the tripodfish, [music] the lizardfish can be both male and female at the same time.
When you think of a river, you usually picture it on land.
Still, nature is quite [music] unpredictable, and it created a river flowing under the ocean in California.
It's running at [music] a depth of around 2 mi.
This river has everything that an ordinary river has: sunken [music] logs, trees, and rocks. And despite its uniqueness, it's not the only one in the world. There are also others in the Amazon [music] and Greenland.
A terrifying creature was discovered near Angola's coast [music] by a remote operating vehicle.
It looks like it doesn't have a head or a body. It was sitting at a depth of around 4,350 ft below the surface.
After doing research, scientists concluded it wasn't anything from a sci-fi movie, it was just a cluster [music] of siphonophores stuck together.
In 2015, some random guy was diving in Caesarea, and something shiny caught his eye.
He reached out, grabbed it, and realized it was a gold [music] coin.
After that, he examined the bottom and found out that there were many more.
He reported the incident to the local authorities, and they concluded that he had found Arabic treasure. The [music] coins were made of solid 24-karat gold and were a few thousand years old, but due to the perfect salinity and temperature, [music] they looked brand new.
The coins belonged to a ship carrying cargo. It was caught up in a storm and unfortunately sank.
One of the [music] weirdest things ever discovered was found in the Baltic Sea.
It's an anomaly that looks as if it was created by a different civilization.
It was discovered by Swedish researchers, and they basically had no idea what it was.
They had to ask tons of other scientists for [music] their opinions.
When you look at this formation from above, it's 200 ft long and looks exactly like a fallen spaceship. [music] It's hard to believe that it's a natural formation, but spoiler alert, [music] it's totally made by nature because the Baltic Sea has gone through many erosions throughout [music] history.
Most likely, the bizarre formation is the result of these processes. [music] A group of divers in Madagascar were shocked when they found this 7-ft monstrosity of a knife on the seafloor.
[music] The speculation started immediately, and many said that the knife was from some giant that had fought megalodons and lived on Earth thousands and thousands of years ago.
That could make a nice story, but [music] the knife is most likely a movie prop that was lost at sea.
One [music] of the ocean's most bizarre animals is the frilled shark. It's believed that this [music] fish is the reason for all those sea serpent stories that sea explorers of the past wrote about.
These animals live pretty deep in the ocean, >> [music] >> but sometimes they can be seen in shallow waters.
It's super rare, but possible.
The frilled shark has a big mouth [music] sporting around 300 teeth. It also has a long body that looks like a lizard, and it is truly [music] a unique species of shark.
Its prey can be half of its size because [music] this shark's stomach is like that of a snake, and it can swallow a huge fish or crustaceans. [music] Spotting a few worms in your garden is no big deal, but after seeing a 26-ft long one in the ocean, you will make your wetsuit a little wetter.
This worm is super rare, and it's completely harmless to humans.
It's actually [music] not a giant worm.
It's a cluster of zooids that are stuck together in a worm-shaped formation.
They usually only eat plankton, bacteria, and other tiny things that can be found in the ocean.
Probably the scariest thing in the ocean that is 100% real is the Magnapinna, which can be found at crazy depths of 20,000 ft below the surface. This monster looks like an underwater Slender Man, but it's just a squid with really long tentacles that can reach a terrifying size of 8 ft. This guy has only been seen a few times, and basically, we don't know much about this creature so far.
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