Gamburtsev Mountain Range

The Gamburtsev Mountain Range is a high mountain system buried beneath East Antarctica’s ice sheet. Seismic surveys revealed it in 1958, and its rugged terrain is comparable in scale to the European Alps.

Antarctic Ice Sheet: A vast layer of glacial ice covering most of Antarctica. Its thickness conceals the Gamburtsev peaks and shapes the landscape above them.
East Antarctica: The larger eastern part of the Antarctic continent, mostly covered by ice. The Gamburtsevs lie beneath its interior, far from exposed coastal mountains.
Soviet Antarctic Expedition: A series of Soviet scientific expeditions that conducted research in Antarctica. Its geophysical surveys discovered the Gamburtsev mountains in 1958.
Operation IceBridge: A NASA airborne mission that measured changes in polar ice and mapped ice-covered terrain. Its airborne surveys collected data relevant to Antarctic ice and subglacial structure.
Gondwana: An ancient supercontinent that joined much of today’s southern landmasses. Reconstructing Gondwana helps constrain the tectonic setting of East Antarctic rocks.
Seismic surveying: A geophysical method that uses seismic waves to infer structures beneath Earth’s surface. Seismic measurements first revealed the buried mountain range in 1958.
East Antarctic Craton: An ancient, stable block of continental crust underlying much of East Antarctica. The range rises within old continental crust, complicating explanations for its formation.
Grigoriy Gamburtsev: A Soviet geophysicist whose name was given to the Gamburtsev Mountain Range. The range commemorates the scientist associated with Soviet geophysical research.
BedMachine Antarctica: A gridded model of Antarctic bed elevation and ice thickness assembled from multiple observations. Its maps place the buried mountain range within a continent-wide bed model.
Thermochronology: A set of methods for estimating when rocks cooled through temperature ranges recorded by minerals. Cooling histories can test when the mountains were uplifted and subsequently eroded.

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