This is an IHeart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Aaron Menke's Cabinet of Curiosity's, A Production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild.

Our world is full of the unexplainable.

And if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.

Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosity's.

In October of 1912, the survivors of the British Antarctic expedition set out to find their lost comrades who had been missing for months after a journey to the South Pole.

Winter was over, and the terrain was crossable once more. They didn't have to search for long.

They found the remains of their compatriots camp only 11 miles from their own base camp.

There were logs detailing how they had become stuck in a blizzard, and eventually all perished.

But there were also samples, samples taken from glaciers never before visited by humans.

No, these samples didn't contain alien life forms, but they did contain the remnants of ancient

terrestrial life, and that life had a story to tell. The story of a breakup. Not between two people,

though, but between two continents.

200 million years ago, in the early Jurassic period, there was a supercontinent in the southern hemisphere that scientists referred to as Gondwana.

If you stood in the exact center of it, you would be treated to quite a view, too.

Dense jungles dotted the valleys and mountains, smoking volcanoes simmered quietly on the horizon,

massive dinosaurs of all kinds were abundant, making the land, sea, and air, their home.

Today, though, we call this central part of Gondwana, Antarctica. Even then, it was a distinct

area, but it was landlocked amongst its fellow future continents like

Australia, Africa, and South America.

Of all of these, though, it was perhaps closest to South America, its true geological soulmate.

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