Oceans cover most of the Earth, including its longest mountain range.
In a recent remake of a 2008 NASA video, planetary scientist James O'Donoghue shows what it would look like if all this water drained away revealing three-fifths of the Earth's surface.
O'Donoghue works for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and previously worked for NASA. For the video, he took an animation created by NASA physicist Horace Mitchell in 2008 and added several changes to it. He edited the time and added a tracker to show how much water is lost.
As the oceans gradually lose water, the first pieces of hidden land appear – the continental shelves – the underwater edges of every continent.
“I slowed down the start because, in the first tens of meters, a lot of underwater landscapes are instantly revealed,” O'Donoghue told Business Insider.
The continental shelves include some of the land bridges that ancient people crossed when they migrated from continent to continent. Tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors could walk from continental Europe to Great Britain, from Siberia to Alaska and from Australia to the surrounding islands.
'When the last ice age occurred, a huge amount of water was frozen as ice at the planet's poles. That is why there used to be land bridges, ”O'Donoghue said. “Each of these connections allowed people to migrate, and when the ice age ended, water filled these places.”
By removing this water, the animation gives an insight into the world of our ancient ancestors.
It also shows the longest mountain chain on Earth, which appears when sea level drops from 2,000 to 3,000 meters. It is a mid-ocean ridge that extends 60,000 kilometers across the globe. More than 90 percent of it is under water.
Once the oceans are 6,000 meters dry, most of the water disappears. But it takes almost another 5,000 meters to empty the deepest place on the planet, the Mariana Trench.
“I love that the ocean floor is as fluid and interesting in its geology as the continents,” O'Donoghue said.
He added that the devastation of the seas is excavating not only “not only the bottom of the ocean, but also the ancient history of mankind.”
This article was published by Business Insider.
Sources: Photo: (James O'Donoghue / NASA)
