Getting trapped on a ship at sea would be bad enough but being trapped on a ship at sea on Lake Michigan in the freezing cold would be even worse. That’s exactly what happened to the unfortunate crew of this ship that was stranded on the icy waters.
A drone flying by the area just happened to snap footage of it, alerting the public to its existence. But what happened to that ship isn’t all that uncommon. In fact, every year, more than two dozen large ships go missing – either sunken or otherwise never heard from again, and that doesn’t include the near hundreds of smaller ships that contribute to the missing vehicles.
A Ton of Grasshoppers
Okay, when we say a ton, we actually mean tens of millions of grasshoppers. Apparently, these guys aren’t very smart because there are millions of swarms trapped inside glaciers in Montana alone. In fact, there are three glaciers in the area that are literally full of them, so much so that two were named Grasshopper Glacier and the other, Hopper Glacier.
Researchers report that some of the insects are several million years old, while some swarms are a bit younger, possibly only a few thousand years old. Montana isn’t the only state where this add phenomenon occurs, as Wyoming has some glaciers full of grasshoppers of its own.
The Woolly Mammoth
Woolly mammoths are the distant relative of today’s elephants. They’re now extinct, but they roamed freely across several continents during the last ice age. The average male mammoth weighed about 6 tons and stood between 9-11 feet tall. Researchers found a very well-preserved female mammoth in the ice in Russia – her brains and blood vessels were still intact.
Yuka, as the mammoth was named, was said to be somewhere between 6 and 9 years old when she passed. By studying the brain, scientists were able to determine that the personality and actions of the woolly mammoths were probably very similar to those of modern elephants. Even though other mammoths have been discovered frozen in the ice, Yuka was the only one whose brain was still preserved enough to examine.
A Subglacial Forest
Imagine walking through an icy tundra one day and realizing that you were standing on top of an entire forest full of trees. That is exactly what happened in the Mendenhall Glacier region of Alaska, where researchers discovered thousands of trees thought to be somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 years old. Now that is seriously old!
As more of the glacier melts, scientists are able to learn more about the trees that lived on Earth so long ago. Right now, they are simply looking at the tip of the iceberg…so to speak, which is the top of some of the long-frozen flora.
A Tunic from the Iron Age
Norway’s melting glaciers have proven time and time again to produce some of the most interesting (and frequent) subglacial discoveries. Weapons and tools, including horseshoes and arrows, etc, continue to turn up in the area.
Scientists pulled a tunic from the ice and dated it back to somewhere between 250-350 A.D. The article of clothing was found buried in not only the ice, but also a few layers of horse poo, and crumpled up into a ball. But regardless of the condition that it was found in, it was still able to tell researchers a lot about life during that time.