Researchers have identified a massive hidden geological feature beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, revealing a previously unrecognized connection between some of the continent's largest buried landscapes.
The newly recognized structure consists of a network of enormous basins concealed beneath ice that exceeds three kilometers (nearly two miles) in thickness in some locations.
Together, these basins form a continent-scale fan-shaped pattern that researchers have named the East Antarctic Fan-shaped Basin Province.
The province encompasses several well-known subglacial features, including the Wilkes and Aurora basins, as well as the basin containing Lake Vostok, the largest known subglacial lake on Earth.
Although scientists have studied many of these basins individually for years, this is the first time they have been recognized as parts of a single, interconnected geological structure.
