Ancient City Exposed By Melting Ice Shelf

Wilkins Shelf Anomaly 1/4/08

Large Cephalopod Fetish 4 17.3.08 1/4/08

Fluorescent Cephalopod, Ross Sea Survey

Cone 3 Mural Hall 1/4/08

Mural Detail 1/4/08

Wilkins Anomaly Ground Level 1/4/08

Archaeozoan Reconstruction (Lake) 31/3/08

Associated Press

Antarctica - In a startling scientific development yesterday Professor William Dyer (Geology, MU) reports discovery of ruins of an ancient city at the edge of the crumbling Wilkins ice shelf in Antarctica.

As part of the International Polar Year program Professor Dyer and a transdiciplinary team including Miskatonic Professors Lake (Biology) and Pabodie (Engineering) are investigating fossils of giant Antarctic marine life forms, previously unknown to science, some unidentifiable as either plants or animals, initially discovered while boring for ice cores.

Professor Lake suggests these fossils represent pre-Cambrian archaeozoa. Though badly damaged by the drilling, Lake reports intact samples have been obtained. The extremely early date in the geological strata of these fossils is otherwise problematic because of their highly evolved features, including star-shaped heads with cephalopoid tentacles.

Aerial photographs taken by Dyer show a sprawling stone city of permutahedra, cones, and non-euclidean forms. Professor Pabodie says these are, "unprecedented [...] atypical of ancient architecture in any other part of the world". Entering a fissure in one of the cones the two discovered a large petroglyphic mural they believe depicts a creation myth including the Moon separating from the Earth and marine forms similar to those discovered on the floor of the Ross Sea this antarctic summer.

Contact with Dyer's party was interrupted 17 hours ago by an unusually severe ice storm. In a garbled voice transmission received from the party before communications were lost, Dyer was apparently preparing to return to the site of the city to "take a lilly", archaeological slang meaning multi-site deep ice core samples. The USGS advises that severe weather conditions make it inadvisable for other polar investigators to attempt to approach the Wilkins shelf site at this time.

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