Mighty Bad Land: A Perilous Expedition to Antarctica Reveals Clues to an Eighth Continent

Written by Bruce Luyendyk and Edward J. Larson

Narrated by Christopher Grove

What does it take to prevail in Antarctica?

Four geologists and two mountain guides face the brutal beauty of West Antarctica eight hundred miles from the United States main base. Their search reaches far into the treacherous mountains of Marie Byrd Land. Over six weeks of living in tents and traveling by snowmobile, the team endures endless cold and furious blizzards. They cross ice fields and hidden crevasses, which one of the team learns about the hard way.

What keeps them going in spite of these dangers? Will the mountains give up their secrets? Can these scientists find evidence of the formation of the ranges many millions of years ago as the giant continent of Gondwana began to break apart? Was a new continent, now known as Zealandia, created by this event?

Mighty Bad Land, told firsthand by Bruce Luyendyk, a former professor of geology, reveals his inner battles and challenges: he's almost fifty, asthmatic, and fights chronic pain. Through deft storytelling, listeners are invited into a land of emptiness, beauty, constant daylight, and unseen menace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: May 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350829921

Bruce Luyendyk

Bruce Luyendyk, Distinguished Professor Emeritus from the University of California, Santa Barbara, was elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. On his first expedition to West Antarctica in 1989, Luyendyk and his geology team found evidence that a large submarine plateau, a fragment from the Gondwana breakup, comprises a sunken continent beneath New Zealand. This eighth continent was named Zealandia by Luyendyk. In 2016, the US Board on Geographic Names honored the author by naming a summit in Antarctica Mount Luyendyk. Luyendyk is a graduate of San Diego State University and the University of California, San Diego. His prior research in marine geophysics included exploration of deep-sea black smokers, i.e., hydrothermal vents, using the deep submersible ALVIN off western Mexico. For this, he and colleagues shared the Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.