Deepest-Ever Rock Core From Beneath Antarctica's Ice. It Holds Clues About the Earth's Past--and Future

The 748-foot-long sediment core contains a record of roughly the past 23 million years, including periods when the planet’s surface temperature was hotter than it is today


Margherita Bassi - Daily Correspondent
February 20, 2026 10:00 a.m.

Researchers are looking into our planet’s past to understand its future. Just like archaeologists investigate layers of dirt for ancient artifacts, geologists analyze layers in cores—tube-shaped samples of earth or ice pulled from the ground—for clues about bygone environmental conditions. Now, a team has recovered a record-breaking sediment core from beneath Antarctic ice to do just that.

Researchers working on the Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2° Celsius of Warming (SWAIS2C) project drilled through 1,716 feet of ice to extract a 748-foot-long sediment core below it, making it the longest ever retrieved from beneath an ice sheet. The rock and mud likely hold a record of the past 23 million years, based on preliminary dating of some tiny fossils within, which will help researchers understand how the planet fared during warmer times in its history, and prepare for a future influenced by climate change.

“What we’re doing here is important, and the need for it is urgent. We’re trying to constrain what’s going to happen to almost the entire Earth over the coming century,” Huw Horgan, a glaciologist at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and SWAIS2C co-chief scientist, says in a video.



Researchers retrieved the core from the Crary Ice Rise (CIR). Ana Tovey / SWAIS2C

The drilling took place at an ice dome called Crary Ice Rise, hundreds of miles from the nearest Antarctic stations, per a statement from ETH Zürich. The site is on the border between the Ross Ice Shelf, which floats atop water, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which sits on land. If the continental hunk of ice were to fully melt, the global sea level would rise by roughly 13 to 16 feet.

More:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-retrieve-the-deepest-ever-rock-core-from-beneath-antarcticas-ice-it-holds-clues-about-the-earths-past-and-future-180988228/