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The Antarctic continent, located in the Earth's southern hemisphere, is centered asymmetrically around the South Pole and largely south of the Antarctic Circle. It is washed by the Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean or, depending on definition, the southern Pacific , Atlantic , and Indian Oceans .
Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent, being about 40% larger than Europe, and has an area of 14,200,000 km 2 (5,500,000 sq mi).
In 1525, Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces discovered the Drake Passage while sailing south from the entrance of the Strait of Magellan. [2] Because of this, the Drake Passage is referred to as the "Mar de Hoces (Sea of Hoces)" in Spanish maps and sources, while almost always in the rest of the Spanish-speaking countries it is mostly known as “Pasaje de Drake” (in Argentina, mainly), or ...
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 north–south motion of Antarctica relative to Africa and South America before anomaly 28 changed to a slow east–west clockwise motion around 60 Ma, an abrupt change coincident with change in triple junction configuration. [6] During the Late Paleocene–Early Eocene Antarctica and South America separated at a rate of only 0.3 cm/yr.
<p>Chances are you make it through most days without sparing a thought for Antarctica. At just over 5.4 million square miles, it's a massive chunk of land that is nearly twice the size of ...
Geographical map of Antarctica. Lying on the Pacific Ocean side of the Transantarctic Mountains, West Antarctica comprises the Antarctic Peninsula (with Graham Land and Palmer Land) and Ellsworth Land, Marie Byrd Land and King Edward VII Land, offshore islands such as Adelaide Island, and ice shelves, notably the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf on the Weddell Sea, and the Ross Ice Shelf on the Ross Sea.
McMurdo Dry Valleys, Landsat 7 imagery acquired on December 18, 1999 The Dry Valleys are so named because of their extremely low humidity and lack of snow or ice cover. They are also dry because, in this location, the mountains are sufficiently high that they block seaward-flowing ice from the East Antarctic Ice Sheet from reaching the Ross