10 Bizarre Things Found Frozen In Ice

10 Bizarre Things Found Frozen In Ice 10 Sacrifices In 1999, an expedition up Argentina’s Llullaillaco volcano found the highest known site having belonged to the ancient Inca Empire

This alone would have been a substantial discovery, but the third day of the expedition also unearthed relics of a dark Inca tradition, when researchers found a grave The grave contained the frozen bodies of three children, two girls and a boy, who were so unsettlingly preserved that researchers claimed they expected them to wake at any moment The ice had mummified the children, who are believed to have been sacrificed 500 years ago in a rare Inca tradition intended to send ‘pure’ citizens to the realms of the gods Calming as that may sound, the children were understandably unsettled, and still had evidence of alcohol and drugs in their systems, used to sedate them during the process Perhaps the best preserved mummies in the world, researchers were able to discern the lavish diets the children were given before their sacrifices

They even identified a tuberculosis-like disease in the lungs of the eldest child, offering new insights into the diseases of the time and how they spread 9 Gassy Reindeer In 2016, the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia experienced abnormal temperatures that soared as high as 95 degrees, from what most sensible people have acknowledged as climate change This heat caused large areas of permafrost to melt, bringing a long dead reindeer back from its icy grave While it wasn’t exactly a zombie reindeer situation, the body was carrying the deadly anthrax virus

The disease hadn’t been seen in the region for 75 years, but the unearthing of the reindeer released pathogens into the air that caused a new outbreak It began with 2,300 other reindeer dying as a result, which quickly spread to their nomadic herders 71 herders were ultimately hospitalised in the first local anthrax outbreak since 1941 This included 41 children, one of whom was a 12-year-old boy, who tragically lost his life to the disease It’s believed that the reindeer had been buried more than 75 years ago, but the hard permafrost made it difficult to bury it very deep

Here, the sub-zero temperatures provided the perfect climate for the anthrax spores to survive for 100s of years 8 A Battlefield More than 30 years before Russia and America’s famous conflict, a different kind of cold war was being fought on the border between Austria-Hungary and Italy Dubbed ‘The White War’, a series of conflicts took place between the allied Italian troops and the Austro-Hungarian soldiers fighting for the Central Powers during the first world war But in the harsh mountainous terrain, enemy soldiers took a secondary role in the battle

According to the White War Historical Society, only about one third of the 150,000 casualties were battle victims The rest lost their lives to avalanches, landslides, frostbite and other illnesses from the extreme cold As a result, entire battlegrounds lay frozen in time in the mountains, but since the 1990s, climate change has slowly begun to uncover the haunting scenes Melting ice has continued to uncover the bodies of soldiers, many of them teenagers, preserved by subzero temperatures Some of these bodies have even been identified, bringing closure to their families

The icy artefacts also include entire cabins, full of weapons, ammo and even personal photographs and pieces of trench art from the tragic conflict 7 Hairy Rhino In September 2015, two Siberian hunters were boating down a stream when they saw some hair protruding from a block permafrost They thought they’d found a frozen reindeer, but as they started to excavate the creature, they realised it more closely resembled a rhino Obviously, this comparison was hindered slightly by the thick coat of fur, but as it happens the two had in fact uncovered a rare wooly rhino corpse

Little is known about the prehistoric rhino Their place in the evolution of the species is as unclear as their living habits or life expectancy, because so few have been found preserved In fact, this was the first ever woolly rhino calf to be discovered, and is in a much better condition than most of its peers Despite not being able to discern its gender, Russian researchers named the rhino Sasha after the hunter that discovered it At around 10,000 years old, Sasha obviously had some imperfections, but a taxidermist was able to bring Sasha back to his or her former glory

This revealed strawberry blonde locks and a length of five feet, which for a seven-month-old like Sasha was is considerably larger than her modern relatives 6 Frozen Noses In early 2018, America’s east coast was hit by what’s been described as a ‘bomb cyclone’, hitting typically warm areas with layers of snow and sudden freezing temperatures This saw entire swamps and lakes freeze over, and if you visited one of these swampsicles in North Carolina, you’d have witnessed a scary phenomenon Poking through the frozen surfaces at Shallotte River Swamp Park and other local swamps were a collection of alligator snouts

The bodies were frozen beneath the surface, but this isn’t as morbid as it sounds, because the alligators were all very much alive In fact, what visitors were witnessing was a rare survival technique that allows the reptiles to survive in waters as cold as 4 degrees In a state known as ‘brumation’, an alligators metabolism will slow dramatically, sending it into a lethargic state The alligators will typically rest at the bottom of a body of water, where they can hold their breath for up to 24 hours, but are sometimes seen poking their snouts through the surface After a week, these conditions typically make the reptiles ill and kill them, but luckily conditions cleared up after a few days and the alligators were A-ok

5 The Iceman’s Curse German tourists, Helmut and Erika Simon were climbing in the Ötztal Alps in 1991, when they stumbled upon what they believed to be a deceased mountaineer They informed local officials of the morbid find, but four days later when it was officially extracted, it became clear the body wasn’t a recent addition to the mountain range Not by a long shot By dating an axe found near the body, researchers deemed that the man, named ‘Otzi’ was roughly 4000 years old

The entire time, Otzi was kept in an incredible condition, preserved by the ice Scientists were able to discern his final meal, lactose intolerance and even his possible cause of death: an ambush attack This grisly demise clearly left Otzi with a grudge, because he’s rumoured to have brought a curse with him from his frozen tomb The legend exists because in the 13 years following his discovery, 7 of the people who unearthed Otzi have lost their lives This includes co-discoverer Helmut Simon, who died while ascending an Austrain mountain, eerily mirroring the iceman he made famous

4 Buried Treasure In January 1966, tragedy struck Air India flight 101, which crashed as it flew over France The remains lay on the side of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in the Alps, along with the 165 people aboard who lost their lives Because of the extreme altitude and unforgiving weather conditions, authorities weren’t able to recover the entire wreckage, but bits and pieces have shown up in the years since But one of the most curious artefacts recovered from the tragedy remained buried in ice for 47 years before it turned up

In 2013, an anonymous mountaineer approached French law enforcement officers carrying a chest In the box, which he turned over to the authorities, were about 100 precious jewels including rubies, sapphires and emeralds The contents totalled around $300,000, which either makes the climber very selfless or very stupid depending on your personal beliefs But his kind act allowed authorities to try and trace the ownership of the box to the family of one of the plane’s passengers Sadly, they weren’t quite as selfish, as two different families tried to claim the buried treasure as their own

3 A Bigger Fish In 2017, Anton and Alex Babich were ice fishing in Wawasee Lake in Indiana, when they stumbled upon a display of nature at work Perfectly preserved in the ice was a snapshot of the food chain in motion, literally, with a pike fish held in place eating a bass The photo they took quickly went viral, and was greeted online by countless cries of ‘fake’, so the brothers returned with a quest to remove the hungry fish and film it all Armed with a chainsaw and a dream, they succeeded in removing the frozen phenomenon and uploaded it to their youtube channel ‘Trendy Outdoorsman’

This set the world wide web alight with theories on how the two managed to pose long enough to get frozen in place, with the most popular coming from Alex Babich himself He believes a fisherman caught the bass, but threw it back because it was too small, then the pike saw an easy meal and tried to eat the floating bass But his hubris got the better of him and he choked and died, where the two floated to their final resting place at the top of the lake 2 Ancient Virus In 2012, a team of Russian scientists found some 30,000 year old fruits, buried in Siberian permafrost

Wisely choosing not to try and get one of their five a day from them, the team instead used them to revive an ancient plant that was long since extinct So far, pretty harmless, but this revival inspire two french evolutionary biologists who had clearly never seen Jurassic Park Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel were inspired to revive an ancient virus from the frost, which they did, ultimately re-discovering what they titled ‘Pithovirus sibericum’ The size of a small bacterium, what they found technically qualified as a giant virus, still active and with no known cure, because no one exactly thought they’d need one Luckily, this and other giant viruses typically only affect amoebas and not humans, but there have been rare cases of them making the special jump

Pithovirus is said to have several surprising structural differences to other viruses, and may prove a useful scientific discovery But it also serves as a stark warning of what might be re-discovered as global warming encroaches 1 Message In a Bottle In 2013, biologists Warwick Vincent and Dennis Sarrazin were exploring Ward Hunt Island, one of Canada’s northernmost landmasses Vincent was collecting samples from a nearby ice shelf, and Sarrazin wandered off to explore the area, which was when he found a curious artifact

Amongst the snow and ice, buried amongst some rocks was a small plastic bottle, containing a ripped piece of notebook paper inside On the paper was a peculiar request The writer asked the finder to measure the bottle’s distance from the glacier and report it back to his Geology department at the University of Ohio It was signed Paul T Walker and dated 1959, which made it all the stranger for two reasons

Firstly, according to Vincent ‘In the '50s, it was unthinkable that the glacier would melt’ Walker had effectively found a way to measure climate change before it was even being seriously discussed Secondly, the letter was written just weeks before Walker’s death at the age of 27 These may have been his last written words, and he never made it back to Ohio, or found out that the glacier had retreated over 100 meters in the 54 years since his prophetic note

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