An international team spent two months in 2008/9 surveying the Gamburtsevs in Antarctica - a series of peaks totally buried under the ice cap. The group has told a major conference in the US that the hidden mountains are more jagged than previously thought. They are also more linear in shape than the sparse data collected in the past had suggested. This latter finding hints at a possible origin for the mountains whose existence has perplexed scientists for 50 years.
"If you have a linear structure it makes them more like the Alps or the Appalachians," explained Dr Michael Studinger from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) of Columbia University, New York.
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