At 1.2-million-years-old, a newly uncovered Antarctic ice core represents the oldest known ice on the planet. The 1.7 mile-long ice core was recovered from over 9,000 feet (2,800 meters) deep underground, where the Antarctic ice sheet meets bedrock. The drilling was completed earlier this month at a location called Little Dome C near the Concordia Research Station in southeastern Antarctica. An international team of scientists representing 10 countries from the European Union-funded Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice project braved temperatures of -31 degrees Fahrenheit to recover this piece of Earth’s natural history.  “From preliminary analyses recorded at Little Dome C, we have a strong indication that the uppermost 2,480 meters [8,136 feet] contain a climate record that goes back to 1.2 million years in a high-resolution record where up to 13,000 years are compressed into one meter of ice,” Julien Westhoff, a chief scientist in the field and postdoctoral student at Copenhagen University, said in a statement.  This newly extracted ice preserved a record of our planet’s climate history, continuous information on atmospheric temperatures, and some clear samples of old air with greenhouse gases.  “This is the longest continuous record of our past climate from an ice core, and it can reveal the interlink between the carbon cycle and temperature of our planet,” Carlo Barbante, professor at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, senior associate member of the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, and coordinator of Beyond EPICA, said in a statement.  [ Related: Over 1,700 frozen viruses found in a Tibetan glacier. ] The team used radio echo sounding technologies and advances in ice flow modeling to pinpoint exactly where to drill. The lowest 688 feet of the ice core above the bedrock is made of older ice that is heavily deformed. The team believes that it is possibly mixed or refrozen and are of unknown origin. Further analysis could help test some previous theories about the behavior of refrozen ice under the Antarctic ice sheet and reveal more about East Antarctica’s glacial history.  Importantly, peering this deep into the ice could help answer one of our planet’s major climate mysteries–what happened when glacial cycles were disrupted roughly 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago. Some scientists believe that our ancestors came close to extinction during these massive climate shifts.  Ice cores and other geological samples are a crucial piece of how scientists understand our planet’s history and how the climate is changing. They can trap bubbles of air and particles that show temperature variation and what greenhouse gases were present and even store viruses. This helps scientists chart out how the climate may have changed over time.   [ Related: See 24,000 years of climate history at a glance. ] Data from other ice cores already helped scientists link the current rise in temperatures to the greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. This new core will be brought back to Europe aboard an ice breaker that must keep it at -58 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists will then analyze the ice samples, seeing if they can even find records beyond 1.2 million years. Dating the underlying rocks will hopefully give scientists a good idea of the last time that this part of Antarctica was ice free. The post 1.2-million-year-old ice pulled up from under Antarctica appeared first on Popular Science.