Scientists have drilled 1.7 miles deep into Antarctica, pulling up an ice core sample that dates back at least 1.2 million years. They expect the sample to offer new insights into the evolution of Earth’s climate and atmosphere throughout history.

Led by The Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy (ISP-CNR), the scientists worked for more than 200 days, drilling into the ice and processing the ice core at a remote site in East Antarctica called Little Dome C, with a balmy average summer temperature of -31 degrees Fahrenheit (-35 degrees Celsius).

In a remarkable scientific achievement, researchers from the Beyond EPICA – Oldest Ice project have successfully drilled a 2,800-meter (9,186-foot) long ice core from the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica.

This newly extracted ice preserved a record of our planet’s climate history, continuous information on atmospheric temperatures, and some clear samples of old air with greenhouse gases. “This is the longest continuous record of our past climate from an ice core,

The fourth Antarctic campaign of the “Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice” project, funded by the European Commission, has achieved a historic milestone for climate science. An international team of scientists successfully drilled a 2,

Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, a researcher from the University of Manitoba, was part of a team that successfully drilled into an ice core 2,800 metres in length, and uncovered the oldest ice core ever retrieved - more than 1.2 million years old. She said the core will give an insight into past climate patterns.

By drilling 1.7 miles beneath the icy surface, the team has pulled a 1.2 million-year-old ice core from Antarctic bedrock. The gases trapped in the core are expected to yield "high-resolution" insights into Earth's climate history.