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Mount Kirkpatrick holds one of the most important fossil sites in Antarctica, the Hanson Formation. Because Antarctica used to be warmer and supported dense conifer and cycad forest, and because all the continents were fused into a giant supercontinent called Pangaea , many ancient Antarctic wildlife share relatives elsewhere in the world.
The frozen continent of Antarctica was the last continent humanity set foot on. The first documented landings made below the Antarctic Circle took place in 1820, when Admiral Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and the crew of the Vostok and Mirny, as part of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, made land at Peter I Island and Alexander Island.
Some 98% of Antarctica is covered by the Antarctic ice sheet, the world's largest ice sheet and also its largest reservoir of fresh water. Averaging at least 1.6 km thick, the ice is so massive that it has depressed the continental bedrock in some areas more than 2.5 km below sea level; subglacial lakes of liquid water also occur (e.g., Lake ...
A map of the Antarctic region, including the Antarctic Convergence and the 60th parallel south The Antarctic Plate. The Antarctic (/ æ n ˈ t ɑːr t ɪ k,-k t ɪ k /, US also / æ n t ˈ ɑːr t ɪ k,-k t ɪ k /; commonly / æ ˈ n ɑːr t ɪ k /) [Note 1] is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole.
The history of Antarctica emerges from early Western theories of a vast continent, known as Terra Australis, believed to exist in the far south of the globe. The term Antarctic, referring to the opposite of the Arctic Circle, was coined by Marinus of Tyre in the 2nd century AD.
Life in the Freezer is a BBC nature documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, first transmitted in the United Kingdom from 18 November 1993.. A study of the seasonal cycle of Antarctica, it was the first of Attenborough's more specialised surveys following his major trilogy that began with Life on Earth.
The South Pole Traverse, also called the South Pole Overland Traverse (SPoT), [2] or McMurdo–South Pole Highway [3] is an approximately 995-mile-long (1,601 km) flagged route over compacted snow and ice [4] in Antarctica that links McMurdo Station on the coast to the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, both operated by the National Science Foundation of the United States. [5]
The Antarctic Peninsula, roughly 1,000 kilometres (650 mi) south of South America, is the northernmost portion of the continent of Antarctica.Like the associated Andes, the Antarctic Peninsula is an excellent example of ocean-continent collision resulting in subduction. [1]