Dinosaur tracks, shipwrecks, entire villages: What drying rivers and melting glaciers are throwing up

As the planet warms up, people and animals struggle to survive the heat, the retreating waters and melting glaciers are revealing ancient secrets hidden deep in pits. 

From bodies, and shipwrecks to ancient villages, here are 5 things discovered due to climate change:

1. Dinosaur tracks

A river in Texas dried up. What was found on the riverbed thrilled visitors and park caretakers alike. The dried-up river exposed the footprints of dinosaurs that lived some 113 million years ago. The track is reportedly one of the longest ever found in the world. The footprints were of Acrocanthosaurus.

In another part of the US, receding waters in Lake Mead is revealing horrifying stories of people who went missing and their bodies found at the bottom of the lake. A body was even found in a barrel. 

2. World War II era shipwreck: Drying rivers in Europe has exposed explosives-laden World War II-era shipwrecks in parts of Serbia. At least 20 shipwrecks have been reported visible as waters receded in the Danube river, raising alarm among locals. The ships formed part of a Nazi Black Sea fleet that sank in 1944 while trying to flee advancing Soviet forces.

The severe decline of the #Danube River to its lowest level in almost a century reveals the hulls of dozens of #German warships that sank during #WWII near the Serbian port of #Prahovo overlooking the river that passes and borders 10 European countries. pic.twitter.com/iHGNOtZ4Q0

— خالد اسكيف (@khalediskef) August 20, 2022

Similarly, World War II shipwrecks and unexploded bombs were also reported sticking out of water in Italy's River Po. 

3. Emperor Nero's bridge: You must have heard of the famous story of Italian Emperor Nero using people as torches by lighting them on fire at his garden during parties. After all, he is said to have played the fiddle as Rome burned. Well, a bridge belonging to the time of Emperor Nero emerged out of the Tiber in Italy due to drought. 

4. Ancient city: Talk about finding Atlantis. Perhaps, the worsening climate change conditions may actually reveal the lost civilisation. But in the meantime, archeologists have actually found something similar, an ancient city long submerged under water in Iraq. As an area of Iraq's Mosul reservoir dried up, an ancient city from 1550 to 1350 BC surfaced. The city was called Kemune, built during the Mitanni Empire in the Bronze Age. 

5. Remains of a plane crash: A plane crashed in 1968 killing all three people on board. The people or the plane was never to be found till it emerged as glaciers melted. An old Piper Cherokee plane's remains were found on the Aletsch glacier in Switzerland as the ice thawed. 

The Piper Cherokee aircraft crashed on the Aletsch glacier in 1968 killing all three on board. The remains of the plane disappeared into the ice. It has now melted out again – 54 years later. Pieces of the aircraft are lying on the glacier surface, scattered over a large area. pic.twitter.com/vQqSQtI9O6

— Secrets Of The Ice (@brearkeologi) August 9, 2022

It's not just a plane crash that has been discovered due to melting glaciers in Europe. Some 3,000 artifacts of the Vikings period and earlier were found in 2020 due to the melting of 51 glaciers in Norway.

"Secrets of the Ice" team have found over 3000 artifacts from the Viking period and earlier, revealed by 51 melting glaciers and ice patches in Norway. @brearkeologi #vikings #archaeology https://t.co/nwvaRmBPoh pic.twitter.com/PF9hDDOFt2

— European Association of Archaeologists (@archaeologyEAA) October 8, 2020

Just a few weeks ago, receding waters in Spain revealed the 'Spanish Stonehenge' dating back some 7,000 years. In the Antarctic, researchers were able to find the wreckage of the 1912 ship Endurance headed by explorer Ernest Shackleton. We wonder what more wonders might reveal themselves due to climate change and what current settlements could be submerged, to be found hundreds of years later.