The Gamburtsev Mountains have long baffled geologists. Discovered by a Soviet geophysicist of the same name in 1958, the year of the first International Polar Year exploration, their origins have been obscure.

Up to 1,200 kilometres long, with serrated peaks that can reach up to 2,700 meters long, the mountain range overlaps with low valleys and troughs. The Gamburtsevs, themselves, are located at a high altitude on a continent that has long been free of any tectonic activity. And yet, the sharp edges of the place correspond to a range that is relatively young and untouched by wind, water and snow's erosive characteristics.

Recently a team of scientists reporting for the Nature journal believe they have discovered the secret to the perplexing mountains. They think the key may be found in a series of interlocking lakes and rifts found in the bedrock, a formation that is not unlike a feature of the African topics, halfway around the world from the Gamburtsevs.

"The East Antarctic rift system resembles one of the geological wonders of the world, the East African rift system. It provides the missing piece of the puzzle that helps explain the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains. The rift system was also found to contain the largest subglacial lakes in Antarctica," said Fausto Ferraccioli, head investigator for the British Antarctic Survey.

They propose that this may be the answer: Billions of years ago, several land masses produced a supercontinent called Gondwana by combining together as continents are wont to do, creating a mountain range at the point of impact. What happened next was a series of collapsing then forming, collapsing and forming that eventually formed the Gamburtsevs.

"We are accustomed to thinking that mountain-building relates to a single tectonic event rather than sequences of events. The lesson we learned about multiple events forming the Gamburtsevs may inform studies of the history of other mountain belts," said Carol Finn of the U.S. Geological Survey.