For years, scientists person debated whether a elephantine heavy crystal support erstwhile covered the full Arctic Ocean during the coldest crystal ages. Now, a caller survey published successful Science Advances challenges this thought arsenic the probe squad recovered nary grounds for the beingness of a monolithic ~1km crystal shelf. Instead, the Arctic Ocean appears to person been covered by seasonal oversea ice—leaving unfastened h2o and life-sustaining conditions adjacent during the harshest periods of acold periods during the past 750,000 years.