The study by the US National Science Foundation suggests some of the landscape beneath the massive Greenland ice sheet hasn't been disturbed for almost 3 million years.
After analysing the chemical composition of silt taken from the bottom of a more than 3km-long ice core, the scientists suggest that pre-glacial landscapes can remain preserved under ice sheets.
They concluded: "the soil has been preserved and only slowly eroded, implying that an ancient landscape underlies 3,000 meters of ice at Summit, Greenland."
The research, which will be published in Science, also suggests that there was a green and forested landscape in northern Greenland before the ice sheet formed.
While the idea of a frozen landscape hidden beneath kilometres of ice is awesome, this work will also help scientists understand more about who climate change will affect Greenland's giant ice sheet in the future. As global average temperatures rise, scientists are worried about the ice sheet melting and raising sea levels by many metres.
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