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Palaeoclimate

East Antarctica's Achilles' heel

The East Antarctic ice sheet is believed to be Earth's most stable ice sheet. Changes in geochemical composition of offshore sediments suggest that its margin repeatedly retreated by at least 350–550 kilometres inland between 5.3 and 3.3 million years ago.

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Figure 1: Antarctic subglacial topography and bathymetry.

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Correspondence to Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand.

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Hillenbrand, CD. East Antarctica's Achilles' heel. Nature Geosci 6, 680–681 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1897

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