Hidden in ice for more than 100 years, the photography notebook of a British explorer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition to Antarctica has been found.

The book belonged to George Murray Levick, a surgeon, zoologist and photographer on Scott’s 1910-1913 voyage. Levick might be best remembered for his observations of Cape Adare’s Adélie penguins (and his scandalized descriptions of the birds’ “depraved” sex lives). The newly discovered book also shows he kept fastidious notes, scrawled in pencil, about the photographs he took at Cape Adare.

Levick’s “Wellcome Photographic Exposure Record and Dairy 1910” had been left behind at Captain Scott’s last expedition base at Cape Evans. Conservationists discovered the notebook outside the hut during last year’s summer melt…

The book has notes detailing the date, subjects and exposure details from his photographs. In his notes, Levick refers to a self-portrait he took while shaving in a hut at Cape Adare and shots he took of his fellow crewmembers as they set up theodolites (instruments for surveying) and fish traps and sat in kayaks.

One hundred years of damage from ice and water dissolved the notebook’s binding. The pages were separated and digitized before the book was put back together again with new binding and sent back to Antarctica, where the Antarctic Heritage Trust maintains 11,000 artifacts at Cape Evans…

Cripes, I love finds like this.

I did some work for a spell with a small team that searched old abandoned homes. Brought out amazing artifacts and diaries from the 18th and 19th centuries. Often, we’d only find a roof lying on the ground with a collapsed dwelling underneath. Propping up a corner, we’d – very carefully – crawl in and mine what we could.