Scientists have discovered a giant, fan-shaped structure that connects several well-known basins deep beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet — and it may have formed in the breakup of the ancient supercontinent Gondwana.

The feature is the product of a tectonic process known as distributed rotational extension, in which Earth's crust deforms outward from a fixed, central point, like fingers spreading out on a human hand. The gaps between the "fingers" in East Antarctica are triangular basins that were previously described but not recorded as belonging to a single system, researchers reported in a new study.