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A key to the modern distribution of a species is the site of its ancestral origin. The origin of many organisms was a puzzle until the significance of continental drift—the separation of major landmasses over geologic time—to biogeography became apparent.

Pangea

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Adapted from C.R. Scotese, The University of Texas at Arlington

Adapted from C.R. Scotese, The University of Texas at Arlington

The history of continental drift with respect to living things can be traced back to the breakup of a giant landmass, Pangea, over some 200 million years. Pangea began to form about 300 million years ago, during the late Carboniferous period, as all of Earth’s landmasses moved slowly toward each other. By the late Permian, roughly 255 million years ago, the landmasses were joined together, forming a compact supercontinent that comprised the major terrestrial habitat of the time. Starting about 237 million years ago, the landmass fragmented, and its components drifted slowly apart.

Laurasia and Gondwana

By the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Pangea had separated into northern (Laurasia) and southern (Gondwana) landmasses. Laurasia comprised what later became North America and Eurasia (Europe and Asia), except for India. Gondwana consisted of all of the other land. Antarctica, India, and Australia began to shift away from Gondwana in the middle of the Jurassic period. By the late Cretaceous period, about 94 million years ago, Gondwana had separated into South America and Africa, but Australia and Antarctica remained connected to each other. India was joined to Madagascar. North America and Eurasia, which had begun drifting apart during the Jurassic, were still joined at the site of the present Bering Strait.

The Drift Toward Modern Continents

During the Paleogene period, about 66 million to 23 million years ago), the continental landmasses drifted to their present locations. South America became connected by Central America to North America. India separated from Madagascar, migrated northward, and crashed into Asia, an event that formed the Himalayas. The Antarctica-Australia landmass split apart: Antarctica moved toward the South Pole, and Australia moved toward the Equator. (See also Earth; plate tectonics.)

The Effect on Species Distribution

Understanding the patterns of continental drift has greatly increased scientists’ understanding of the modern distribution patterns of living things. Although the geologic changes occurred over about a 200-million-year time frame, some organisms show little evidence of evolutionary change. For example, side-necked turtles (suborder Pleurodira) have changed little since the Jurassic period. Scientists presume they dispersed throughout Gondwana before it broke apart. Today the turtles are found in parts of South America, Africa, Madagascar, Australia, and islands of the Indian Ocean—but in no other parts of the world.

Peter Firus, Flagstaffotos

Peter Firus, Flagstaffotos

Groups such as the mammals evolved more rapidly in the last 100 million years. Because of this, land areas isolated from each other through the separation of continents may have widely different forms of mammals. For example, themarsupials of Australia are distinct from the mammals of other continents. This is because the Australian marsupials evolved under different conditions than other marsupials after Australia separated from the other continents.

Climatic Life Zones

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Although the present distribution of organisms depends on their ancestral distribution and evolution over geologic time, environmental factors have also played a role. The most apparent general environmental factor affecting the distribution of a species is climate. Suitable conditions of temperature and moisture are vital to all organisms.

Certain species are intolerant of cold; other species cannot live in warm climates. Some have evolved to withstand extreme drought; others are adapted to excessively wet conditions. Temperature, rainfall, and other environmental factors such as soil type and day length determine if a species can survive in a region.

The major recognizable life zones of the continents are called biomes. Because vegetation is usually the dominant and most apparent feature of the landscape, a biome is characterized by its plant community.

Biomes represent the large-scale general patterns of species distribution and do not include regional variations. At least six major terrestrial biomes are generally recognized (plus the marine and freshwater biomes): tundra, taiga, temperate deciduous forest, tropical rainforest, grassland and savanna, and desert. Most of these biomes are subdivided in several ways as a result of regional variability. Each is characterized by organisms that are adapted to the climatic conditions and environment of the biome.

Tundra

© erectus/Fotolia

© erectus/Fotolia

The coldest of the six major biomes, and one of the driest, is the tundra of the Arctic regions. Tundra covers much of the land between the North Pole and the taiga, in some places farther south than latitude 60° N. It is so cold that a layer of permanently frozen soil, called permafrost, lies under the rocky topsoil. Although the tundra receives little precipitation, bogs and ponds often form, because little evaporation and drainage take place.

The number of species in the tundra is low compared to other biomes. Life abounds during the warmer months, but only species specially adapted to the long frozen winters can survive year-round.In the winter most of the organisms become dormant or migrate to warmer regions. Lichens, mosses, and grasses are the dominant ground cover, but some flowering plants are abundant during the short, cool summers. There are some low and dwarf shrubs but no trees. Animals include wolves, foxes, reindeer (caribou), voles, squirrels, and hares, as well as birds, insects, and fish. Amphibians and reptiles are rare.

Taiga

© Tatiana Grozetskaya/Shutterstock.com

© Tatiana Grozetskaya/Shutterstock.com

The taiga, or boreal forest, covers a broad region of cold, but not permanently frozen, land south of the tundra. It extends in a belt across North America, Europe, and Asia between the latitudes 60° N and 50° N. The taiga is warmer than the tundra and also receives more precipitation, mostly in summer. The winters are long and cold, while the summers are short and cool to moderately warm.

Species diversity is higher than in the tundra but lower than in warmer biomes. Evergreen conifers—needle-leaved shrubs and trees such as pines, firs, andspruces—dominate the landscape. Some areas have hardwoods, such as birch and aspen, that are deciduous, meaning that they lose and regrow their leaves seasonally. Many areas of the taiga have dense stands of a few species of tree. As a result of their thick growth, little light reaches the lower levels of the forest and fewer plants grow there. Boreal fauna include bears, moose, wolves, lynx, reindeer, shrews, snowshoe hares, and rodents. Migratory birds are plentiful in the summer, when insects also are abundant.

Temperate Deciduous Forest

Heather Angel

Heather Angel

In some of the milder climates of the Northern Hemisphere, temperate deciduous forests grow. They are found mainly in the temperate regions of eastern North America, western and central Europe, and eastern Asia. (Deciduous forests are distinct from the coastal forests of western North America and Chile, where milder temperatures and higher precipitation support different patterns of growth and diversity.) Humans have cleared much of the area that the forests originally covered. The winters vary from cold to mild, but the warm growing season is several months long, and rainfall is generally high.

The species diversity is also high. Temperate forests are dominated by hardwood broad-leaved trees, most of which lose their leaves each fall and grow new ones each spring. Oaks, beeches, hickories, and maples are common. Sufficient light reaches the forest floor to support the growth of many species of shrubs, herbs, and mosses. Flowering plants are abundant in the spring. Animals include squirrels, rabbits, deer, foxes, wolves, bears, and many other mammals; many kinds of birds, such as owls, pigeons, and migrating songbirds; and some reptiles and amphibians.

Tropical Rainforest

© LoonChild/Fotolia

© LoonChild/Fotolia

Lush with broad-leaved evergreen trees and diverse plant and animal life, tropical rainforests are situated in the wet, warm areas near the Equator. Rainforests occupy parts of northern South America, Central America, equatorial Africa, India and Southeast Asia, and northeastern Australia.

Tropical rainforests receive the most rainfall of any terrestrial biome and have warm temperatures year-round. The trees often form a dense canopy, or upper layer, sometimes resulting in daytime semidarkness at ground level. Many animals live in the canopy and rarely leave. Epiphytes, or air plants, live on tree trunks or branches and never touch the ground during their life cycle. Among them are numerous species of orchids, ferns, and bromeliads. Lianas (woody vines) almost completely cover many of the trees.

Species numbers and interactions among species in tropical rainforests surpass those of any other terrestrial environment. Many species found in rainforests are not found anyplace else on Earth. Among these are mammals such as gorillas, orangutans, and most monkeys; birds such as toucans and many parrots; numerous species of reptiles and of frogs and other amphibians; countless species of insects; and countless plants, including trees such as mahogany and teak. Sadly, large tracts of rainforest are being lost as land is cleared for human activities such as logging and agriculture.

Grassland and Savanna

© EcoView/Fotolia

© EcoView/Fotolia

In temperate or tropical regions where precipitation is sparse or erratic, grasses are the dominant plants. Trees and shrubs are rare or absent in temperategrasslands, which cover large tracts of central North America, central and eastern Asia, eastern Europe, southern Africa, and southern South America. These grasslands have dry, warm to hot summers and damp, cold winters. Prairies, steppes, and pampas are all types of temperate grasslands.

Tropical grasslands, or savannas, have scattered drought-resistant trees. Savannas are found in northern Australia, southern India, part of Southeast Asia, northern South America, and more than half of sub-Saharan Africa. Savannas are warm year-round, with distinct wet and dry seasons.

Both savannas and grasslands exist as vast plains that accommodate grasses plus a limited number of other vascular plants. Characteristic animals include small burrowing mammals, large grazing mammals, and the mammals that prey on them. Animals range from the lions, hyenas, baboons, zebras, gazelles, giraffes, warthogs, vultures, and ostriches of Africa’s Serengeti Plains, to the coyotes, skunks, badgers, and songbirds of North America’s prairies.

Desert

© Robert and Linda Mitchell

© Robert and Linda Mitchell

Many people associate deserts with intense heat, but these biomes actually are characterized by their extreme dryness. Deserts typically receive less than 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain annually. The vegetation is normally very sparse, and both plants and animals are specially adapted to withstand low moisture levels.

© lucky_photo/Fotolia.com

© lucky_photo/Fotolia.com

Deserts are found on every continent. Hot deserts, where it can be extremely hot during the day but cool at night, are found near the latitudes 30° N and 30° S. The Sahara in northern Africa is the world’s largest hot desert. Other hot deserts include the Kalahari in southern Africa and those in the southwestern United States and in the outback of Australia. Plants and animals are adapted to the harsh environment in many ways. Plants such as cacti and some euphorbias store moisture in their stems and have needlelike leaves that limit water loss. Some plants complete their entire life cycle within just a few weeks after a rain. The kidneys of some desert mammals, such as rodents, are uniquely adapted to retaining water. Many animals are active at night, thereby avoiding the daytime heat.

Temperate, or cold, deserts lie at higher latitudes. Sometimes much of Antarctica is considered a desert. Aside from this, other large cold deserts include the Taklimakan in northwestern China, the Gobi in Mongolia, the Great Basin in the western United States, and the Atacama Desert in Chile. Cold deserts have cold winters but may have fairly warm summers. Scattered small bush vegetation is common.

Animals in the various deserts include many lizards and snakes, plus burrowing rodents such as gerbils, mice, and gophers. There are also jackrabbits, gazelles, coyotes, foxes, owls, vultures, and hawks.

Factors Affecting Distribution

Prehistoric distribution, evolutionary history, and climate are prevalent factors influencing the modern distribution patterns of living things. A variety of other factors also affect regional distribution of species. These factors differ greatly in their impact, depending upon the timing of events and the biology of the species involved.

Environmental Barriers

Sometimes environmental barriers can influence the distribution of species by making a region inaccessible to a particular group. For instance, a high mountain range may prevent the migration of ground-dwelling species between two areas. Open ocean is an obvious and significant environmental barrier between landmasses. Biomes themselves can even serve as environmental barriers, one of the most famous being the Sahara, which ecologically separates central from northern Africa. Biogeographers use ecology, geology, and evolutionary biology to determine the impact of environmental barriers on species distribution.

Dispersal Mechanisms

G.R. Roberts

G.R. Roberts

Biogeographers are also interested in how species colonize new areas. The study of dispersal patterns in living things involves examining their structure, functioning, and behavior. Their degree of mobility and the methods for the dispersal of their eggs or seeds are important in understanding how species overcome environmental barriers and spread to new areas. Plant seeds that are carried by wind, water, or animals can disperse over great distances. For instance, coconut palms are found on most tropical islands because their fruits—coconuts—can float, carrying their seeds to far-flung islands. Many birds and mammals can migrate over long distances to establish new populations.

Evolution and Speciation

As populations of living things adapt to new environmental circumstances over geologic time, they may evolveinto new species that are considerably different from their ancestors. Information from the fossil record and from affinities between extant (living) species helps biogeographers speculate about where the extant species or their ancestors lived in the past. Comparison of DNA sequences from separate populations of extant species has become a vital tool for calculating when these species may have evolved.

Invasion and Competition

Competition between species for the same food sources or for the same habitats is significant in the distribution of organisms. Competition is a complex biological phenomenon that many biologists consider to be a key factor in modern biogeographic patterns. A classic example is the case of the many South American marsupials that became extinct between roughly 24 and 15 million years ago. Biologists believe that the South American marsupials could not successfully compete for resources with North American placental mammals, which invaded South America via the Central American land bridge and gradually replaced them.

Human Influence

George W. Robinson—Root Resources/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

George W. Robinson—Root Resources/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Today’s distribution patterns are in great part a product of human intervention, whether intentional or accidental. The house sparrow and the common starling, originally species of Eurasia, have become a dominant part of the bird population of the United States and Canada. The European hare, introduced into Australia, has successfully colonized many areas of the continent. The brown tree snake (Boiga irregularis), a native of Papua New Guinea, rendered most of the flightless birds of Guam extinct after being transported accidentally to the island in a ship’s cargo. The South American water hyacinth and the Asian kudzu vine are considered pests in the southeastern United States because of their invasion of the region following human introduction.

These instances represent some of the thousands of human introductions of plants and animals to new regions. Although most species introduced from one continent to another do not fare well and eventually become extinct without human care, some are extremely successful and may replace native forms to the extent of becoming unwanted pests.

Besides the transcontinental introduction of species, transplants to different regions on the same continent are also common. For example, rainbow trout, native to rivers along the northwestern coast of North America, have been successfully established in cold-water streams of the central and eastern United States. Because of its commercial importance since ancient times, the date palm has been distributed throughout North Africa and the Middle East to places, including isolated oases, where it might never have reached without human assistance.

© thousandsanimals/Fotolia

© thousandsanimals/Fotolia

The extinction of many species has resulted from human activities as well. Over the last several hundred years humans have eliminated countless species—some, such as the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, through hunting and others, such as the Carolina parakeet, by destroying natural habitat. Hundreds of other species including the Chinese alligator, the lowland and mountaingorillas, the black, Sumatran, and Javan rhinoceroses, and the California condor live at the edge of extinction. Although extinction and the gradual replacement of species by others is a natural phenomenon, the rapid and global impact of human activity has greatly accelerated the process; thus evolutionary replacement has not had time to occur. Many changes incurred by the introduction of species to new areas and the relentless extinction of others are irrevocable. (See also endangered species.)

Island and Marine Biogeography

Because islands are small geographic units with distinct boundaries, they serve as useful models to illustrate the mechanisms of biogeographic phenomena. Intensive ecological studies on islands have provided key insights into invasion and colonization patterns, dispersal mechanisms, and extinction rates.

Ecologists have documented that the amount of usable habitat on an island determines how many species can be supported. Mathematical formulas show that islands reach an equilibrium, or balance, when the rate at which immigrating species integrate into the island’s communities equals the rate at which resident species become extinct. These findings have vital implications for the conservation and management of actual islands, as well as mainland “islands”—areas of habitat that are isolated from each other by geographic barriers such as highways or shopping malls built in formerly intact habitat. Such construction presents a tremendous barrier to species such as turtles. (See also population biology.)

Ocean environments have not received the level of attention that terrestrial habitats have from a biogeographic point of view. Environmental barriers in marine systems are seldom as abrupt as in terrestrial systems, so that distinct groups of organisms are not as recognizable. Furthermore, the world’s oceans are continuous, so migration between areas and mixing of species are likelier. Because of these differences, isolation of major groups from each other is less likely to occur in marine habitats.

J. Whitfield Gibbons

Ed.

Additional Reading

Allaby, Michael. Deserts; Grasslands; Temperate Forests; Tropical Forests (Chelsea House, 2006).Cox, C.B., and Moore, P.D. Biogeography: An Ecological and Evolutionary Approach, 7th ed. (Blackwell, 2005).Crisci, J.V., and others. Historical Biogeography (Harvard Univ. Press, 2003).Day, Trevor. Lakes and Rivers; Oceans; Taiga (Chelsea House, 2006).MacArthur, R.H., and Wilson, E.O. Theory of Island Biogeography (Princeton Univ. Press, 2001).MacDonald, G.M.Biogeography: Space, Time, and Life (Wiley, 2003).Moore, P.D. Agricultural and Urban Areas; Tundra; Wetlands (Chelsea House, 2006).Quammen, David. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction (Scribner’s, 1997).Warhol, Tom. Chaparral and Scrub; Desert; Forest; Grassland; Tundra; Water (Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2006–07).

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Antarctica, fifth in size among the world’s continents. Its landmass is almost wholly covered by a vast ice sheet.Transantarctic MountainsHannes GrobeHannes GrobeLying almost concentrically around the South Pole, Antarctica—the name of which means “opposite to the Arctic”—is the southernmost continent, a circumstance that has had momentous consequences for all aspects of its character. It covers about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km), and would be essentially circular except for the outflaring Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches toward the southern tip of South America (some 600 miles [970 km] away), and for two principal embayments, the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. These deep embayments of the southernmost Pacific and Atlantic oceans make the continent somewhat pear-shaped, dividing it into two unequal-sized parts. The larger is generally known as East Antarctica because most of it lies in east longitudes. The smaller, wholly in west longitudes, is generally called West Antarctica. East and West Antarctica are separated by the 1,900-mile-long Transantarctic Mountains. Whereas East Antarctica consists largely of a high, ice-covered plateau, West Antarctica consists of an archipelago of mountainous islands covered and bonded together by ice.icebergiStockphoto/ThinkstockiStockphoto/ThinkstockThe continental ice sheet contains approximately 7 million cubic miles (29 million cubic km) of ice, representing about 90 percent of the world’s total. The average thickness is about 1.5 miles (2.45 km). Many parts of the Ross and Weddell seas are covered by ice shelves, or ice sheets floating on the sea. These shelves—the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—together with other shelves around the continental margins, constitute about 10 percent of the area of Antarctic ice. Around the Antarctic coast, shelves, glaciers, and ice sheets continually “calve,” or discharge, icebergs into the seas.South Pole: Amundsen-Scott South Pole StationBill SpindlerBill SpindlerBecause of this vast ice, the continent supports only a primitive indigenous population of cold-adapted land plants and animals. The surrounding sea is as rich in life as the land is barren. With the decline of whaling and sealing, the only economic base in the past, Antarctica now principally exports the results of scientific investigations that lead to a better understanding of the total world environment. The present scale of scientific investigation of Antarctica began with the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957–58. Although early explorations were nationalistic, leading to territorial claims, modern ones have come under the international aegis of the Antarctic Treaty. This treaty, which was an unprecedented landmark in diplomacy when it was signed in 1959 by 12 nations, preserves the continent for nonmilitary scientific pursuits.Antarctica, the most remote and inaccessible continent, is no longer as unknown as it was at the start of IGY. All its mountain regions have been mapped and visited by geologists, geophysicists, glaciologists, and biologists. Some mapping data are now obtained by satellite rather than by observers on the surface. Many hidden ranges and peaks are known from geophysical soundings of the Antarctic ice sheets. By using radio-echo sounding instruments, systematic aerial surveys of the ice-buried terrains can be made.The ice-choked and stormy seas around Antarctica long hindered exploration by wooden-hulled ships. No lands break the relentless force of the prevailing west winds as they race clockwise around the continent, dragging westerly ocean currents along beneath. The southernmost parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans converge into a cold, oceanic water mass with singularly unique biologic and physical characteristics. Early penetration of this Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean, as it has been called, in the search for fur seals led in 1820 to the discovery of the continent. Icebreakers and aircraft now make access relatively easy, although still not without hazard in stormy conditions. Many tourists have visited Antarctica, and it seems likely that, at least in the short run, scenic resources have greater potential for economic development than do mineral and biological resources.The term Antarctic regions refers to all areas—oceanic, island, and continental—lying in the cold Antarctic climatic zone south of the Antarctic Convergence, an important boundary with little seasonal variability, where warm subtropical waters meet and mix with cold polar waters. For legal purposes of the Antarctic Treaty, the arbitrary boundary of latitude 60° S is used. The familiar map boundaries of the continent known as Antarctica, defined as the South Polar landmass and all its nonfloating grounded ice, are subject to change with future changes of climate. The continent was ice-free during most of its lengthy geologic history, and there is no reason to believe it will not become so again in the probably distant future.Physical geographyThe landGEOLOGIC RECORDANTARCTICA AND CONTINENTAL DRIFTThe geologic evolution of Antarctica has followed a course similar to that of the other southern continents. The earliest chapters in Antarctica’s rather fragmentary record extend far back, perhaps as much as 3 billion years, into early Precambrian time. Similarity in patterns of crustal and biological evolution in the southern continents can be traced back some 150 million years, and evolutionary courses began to diverge conspicuously by about 70 million years ago, in the late Mesozoic Era. Plant and animal migration routes that apparently had interconnected all the southern continents were largely cut off by the outset of the Cenozoic Era (i.e., about 66 million years ago). Antarctica became isolated at a time when land mammals diversified and flourished elsewhere, populating all the other continents of the world. Antarctica had long been thought to be a migratory path for marsupials moving between southern continents in early Cenozoic time. But documentation for the theory was not discovered until 1982, when the first mammal remains, a marsupial fossil, were found on Seymour Island in the Weddell Sea. The subsequent growth of Antarctica’s ice sheets cut off any further migrations by land animals.Now bathed by polar ice, Antarctica has abundant fossil evidence that its climate and terrain at one time supported far more populous flora and fauna than today’s few seedless plants and primitive insects. Much of Antarctica was densely forested in Mesozoic times (about 252 million to 66 million years ago), dominated by southern conifers of podocarps and araucarias, with undergrowth of rainforest-type ferns. Angiosperm trees, particularly the southern beech, Nothofagus, appeared during the Cretaceous Period (about 145 to 66 million years ago) and lingered in places until about 2 million years ago as Antarctica drifted poleward, cooled, and became glaciated. Remains of luxuriant extinct floras, as well as fossils of Mesozoic reptiles, dinosaurs, and amphibians, have been discovered, and these compare so closely to those of other southern continents that many geologists have postulated former contiguity of these lands in a single giant continent called Gondwana. Continental stratigraphic evidence and the dating of seafloors seem to indicate that the supercontinent broke apart along Jurassic rift faults 180 to 160 million years ago, and fragments such as Africa and Australia separated from Antarctica in Jurassic to Cretaceous time (about 201 to 66 million years ago) and in the early Cenozoic Era. Early stages of rifting were marked by immense outpourings of plateau lavas (Kirkpatrick Basalt, on Mount Kirkpatrick) and by related sill intrusions (Ferrar Dolerites) across Antarctica, including one of the world’s largest layered gabbroic igneous complexes, the Dufek intrusion, in the Pensacola Mountains.Modern theory ties mobile zones to the interaction and jostling of immense crustal plates (see plate tectonics). Modern plate boundaries may be far different from ancient ones presumably marked by old fold belts. Ancient Antarctic mobile belts, such as are followed by today’s Transantarctic Mountains, terminate at continental margins abruptly, as if sliced off, and seemingly reappear in other lands across young ocean basins. Much research has been concentrated on attempting to match intercontinentally the detailed structure of opposed coasts, such as between Antarctica and Australia, in an effort to learn whether they had been actually connected before the latest cycle of crustal spreading from intervening mid-oceanic ridges. Similarities between ancient mobile belts now suggest to some geologists that Antarctica may even have been connected to southwestern North America more than 600 million years ago, in late Precambrian time.STRUCTURAL FRAMEWORKMost of the Antarctic geologic record lies hidden beneath the vast regions of snow and ice that make up more than 95 percent of the continent’s surface terrain. No one knows what important segments of the record lie concealed in buried ranges such as the Gamburtsev Mountains, the topography of which has been mapped only by seismic reflections through the great East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The extraordinarily thick cover, the extremely difficult working conditions, and the tremendous expense of mounting expeditions into remote areas have long held geologic knowledge of Antarctica far behind that of other continents. Great advances by geologists of many Antarctic Treaty nations, however, have yielded geologic maps of at least reconnaissance scale for virtually all exposed mountain areas.From results mainly of British expeditions early in the 20th century, the concept arose that Antarctica is made up of two structural provinces—a long, stable Precambrian shield in East Antarctica and a much younger Mesozoic and Cenozoic mobile belt in West Antarctica—separated by the fault-block belt, or horst, of the Transantarctic Mountains. East and West Antarctica have come to be known respectively as the Gondwana and Andean provinces, indicating general affinities of each sector with other regions—that is, the east seems to have affinity with the Gondwana region of peninsular India, and the west seems to represent a southerly continuation of the South American Andes. As new expeditions study and restudy each range in ever-increasing detail, concepts of the geologic structure are continually modified. Antarctica’s structural record is now known to be more complex than that implied in the past.The average thickness of the terrestrial crust for both East and West Antarctica approximates that of other continents. Although it has been postulated that West Antarctica might be an oceanic island archipelago if the ice were to melt, its crustal thickness of about 20 miles indicates an absence of oceanic structure. This thickness is similar to that of coastal parts of other continents. The crust thickens sharply along the Transantarctic Mountains front, possibly a deep crustal fault system, and averages about 25 miles thick in East Antarctica. Significant earthquakes are not recorded along this or other known faults in Antarctica, the most seismically quiet of all continents, in which mostly minor activity is associated with surrounding oceanic ridges or volcanoes. However, the occurrence of one unusually large earthquake of magnitude 6.4 in the Bellingshausen Sea in 1977 suggests that the Antarctic Plate may have greater seismicity than generally believed.The ancient crust of Antarctica must have been highly mobile and the configuration of the continent many hundreds of millions of years ago in the Precambrian far different from today’s. Ancient marine and lake basins were filled with a variety of sedimentary and volcanic debris eroded from primeval lands. During mountain-building episodes these materials were complexly deformed and recrystallized deep within the crust to form, particularly in East Antarctica, great crystalline-rock complexes. At the surface, rocks were uplifted and mountains were carved by erosion as sediments filled new basins and new folds of the Earth’s crust were formed. Again and again this cycle was repeated during the evolution of Antarctica. Mobility ceased approximately 400 million years ago in the Transantarctic Mountains. Between that time, in the Devonian Period (about 419 million to 359 million years ago), and the Late Jurassic Epoch (which began about 164 million years ago), a series of mainly quartzose sediments was laid down in ancient lakes and shallow seas in the sites of former mountain chains that had been carved away by erosion. Known as the Beacon Sandstone, this formation of platform sediments contains a rich record of extinct Antarctic life-forms, including freshwater fish fossils in Devonian rocks; ancient temperate forests, of Glossopteris trees in coal deposits of Permian age (about 299 million to 252 million years old) and Dicroidium trees in Triassic-age coals (those roughly 252 million to 201 million years old); and large reptiles, such as Lystrosaurus, and amphibians in Triassic rocks. In 1990–91 the first dinosaur fossils were found in the Transantarctic Mountains near the South Pole; they resembled those of early Jurassic age known from China, and, together with associated plant fossils, they suggest the presence of mild climates at this time in Antarctica when this part of the continent is believed to have been at a latitude of about 65° S.Tyree, MountColin Monteath—Hedgehog House/Minden Pictures/Getty ImagesColin Monteath—Hedgehog House/Minden Pictures/Getty ImagesTillites—rocks deposited by ancient glaciers—underlie Permian coal beds in numerous places in Antarctica just as they do in the other southern, including now tropical, continents. The widespread occurrence of glacial erratics, containing microfossils of Cretaceous and Cenozoic age, is an indication of the presence of rocks that are younger than the Beacon Sandstone lying underneath ice sheets near the Transantarctic Mountains. The youngest mountain chain in Antarctica is the southward extension of the Andes Mountains of South America that makes up the Antarctic Peninsula, Ellsworth Land, and part of Marie Byrd Land.RELIEFThere are two faces of the present-day continent of Antarctica. One, seen visually, consists of the exposed rock and ice-surface terrain. The other, seen only indirectly by seismic or other remote-sensing techniques, consists of the ice-buried bedrock surface. Both evolved through long and slow geologic processes.Effects of glacial erosion and deposition dominate everywhere in Antarctica, and erosional effects of running water are relatively minor. Yet, on warm summer days, rare and short-lived streams of glacial meltwater do locally exist. The evanescent Onyx River, for example, flows from Lower Wright Glacier terminus to empty into the nondrained basin of Lake Vanda near McMurdo Sound. Glacially sculptured landforms now predominate, as they must have some 300 million years ago, in an earlier period of continental glaciation of all of Gondwana.Vinson MassifGordon Wiltsie/AlpenImage, Ltd.Gordon Wiltsie/AlpenImage, Ltd.Antarctica, with an average elevation of about 7,200 feet (2,200 metres) above sea level, is the world’s highest continent. (Asia, the next, averages about 3,000 feet.) The vast ice sheets of East Antarctica reach heights of 11,500 feet or more in four main centres: Dome A (Argus) at 81° S, 77° E; Dome C at 75° S, 125° E; Dome Fuji at 77° S, 40° E; and Vostok station at 77° S, 104° E. Without its ice, however, Antarctica would probably average little more than about 1,500 feet. It would then consist of a far smaller continent (East Antarctica) and a nearby island archipelago. A vast lowland plain between 90° E and 150° E (today’s Polar and Wilkes subglacial basins) would be fringed by the ranges of the Transantarctic Mountains and of the Gamburtsev Mountains, 6,500 to 13,000 feet high. The rest might be a hilly to mountainous terrain. Relief in general would be great, with elevations ranging from 16,066 feet (4,897 metres) at Vinson Massif in the Sentinel Range, the highest point in Antarctica, to more than 8,200 feet below sea level in an adjoining marine trough to the west (Bentley Subglacial Trench). Areas that are now called “lands,” including most of Ellsworth Land and Marie Byrd Land, would be beneath the sea.Erebus, Mount© Galen Rowell/Corbis© Galen Rowell/CorbisIce-scarred volcanoes, many still active, dot western Ellsworth Land, Marie Byrd Land, and sections of the coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula and Victoria Land, but principal activity is concentrated in the volcanic Scotia Arc. Only one volcano, Gaussberg (90° E), occurs along the entire coast of East Antarctica. Long dormant, Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, showed increased activity from the mid-1970s. Lava lakes have occasionally filled, but not overspilled, its crater, but the volcano’s activity has been closely monitored because Antarctica’s largest station (McMurdo Station, U.S.) lies on its lower flank. One of several violent eruptions of Deception Island, a volcanic caldera, in 1967–70 destroyed nearby British and Chilean stations. Whereas volcanoes of the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc are mineralogically similar to the volcanoes typical of the Pacific Ocean rim, the others in Antarctica are chemically like those of volcanoes along the East African Rift Valley.CLIMATEThe unique weather and climate of Antarctica provide the basis for its familiar appellations—Home of the Blizzard and White Desert. By far the coldest continent, Antarctica has winter temperatures that range from −128.6 °F (−89.2 °C), the world’s lowest recorded temperature, measured at Vostok Station (Russia) on July 21, 1983, on the high inland ice sheet to −76 °F (−60 °C) near sea level. Temperatures vary greatly from place to place, but direct measurements in most places are generally available only for summertime. Only at fixed stations operated since the IGY have year-round measurements been made. Winter temperatures rarely reach as high as 52 °F (11 °C) on the northern Antarctic Peninsula, which, because of its maritime influences, is the warmest part of the continent. Mean temperatures of the coldest months are −4 to −22 °F (−20 to −30 °C) on the coast and −40 to −94 °F (−40 to −70 °C) in the interior, the coldest period on the polar plateau being usually in late August just before the return of the sun. Whereas midsummer temperatures may reach as high as 59 °F (15 °C) on the Antarctic Peninsula, those elsewhere are usually much lower, ranging from a mean of about 32 °F (0 °C) on the coast to between −4 and −31 °F (−20 and −35 °C) in the interior. These temperatures are far lower than those of the Arctic, where monthly means range only from about 32 °F in summer to −31 °F in winter.International concern is increasing over the possibility of global warming (an amplification of Earth’s greenhouse effect). The glaciers and ice sheets of Antarctica may document such change, especially in West Antarctica. Average winter temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 10.8 °F (6 °C) since 1960, and the disintegration of much of the Larsen Ice Shelf between January 1995 and March 2002 was largely attributed to climatic changes resulting from rising average air temperatures.Wind chill—the cooling power of wind on exposed surfaces—is the major debilitating weather factor of Antarctic expeditions. Fierce winds characterize most coastal regions, particularly of East Antarctica, where cold, dense air flows down the steep slopes off interior highlands. Known as katabatic winds, they are a surface flow that may be smooth if of low velocity but that may also become greatly turbulent, sweeping high any loose snow, if a critical velocity is surpassed. This turbulent air may appear suddenly and is responsible for the brief and localized Antarctic “blizzards” during which no snow actually falls and skies above are clear. During one winter at Mirny Station, gusts reached more than 110 miles per hour on seven occasions. At Commonwealth Bay on the Adélie Coast the wind speed averaged 45 miles per hour (20 metres per second). Gusts estimated at between 140 and 155 miles per hour on December 9, 1960, destroyed a Beaver aircraft at Mawson Station on the Mac. Robertson Land coast. Winds on the polar plateau are usually light, with monthly mean velocities at the South Pole ranging from about 9 miles per hour (4 metres per second) in December (summer) to 17 miles per hour (8 metres per second) in June and July (winter).The Antarctic atmosphere, because of its low temperature, contains only about one-tenth of the water-vapour concentration found in temperate latitudes. This atmospheric water largely comes from ice-free regions of the southern oceans and is transported in the troposphere into Antarctica mostly in the 140° sector (80° E to 140° W) from Wilkes Land to Marie Byrd Land. Most of this water precipitates as snow along the continental margin. Rainfalls are almost unknown. Despite the tremendous volume of potential water stored as ice, Antarctica must be considered one of the world’s great deserts; the average precipitation (water equivalent) is only about 2 inches (50 mm) per year over the polar plateau, though considerably more, perhaps 10 times as much, falls in the coastal belt. Lacking a heavy and protective water-vapour-rich atmospheric layer, which in other areas absorbs and reradiates to Earth long-wave radiation, the Antarctic surface readily loses heat energy into space.Many factors determine Antarctica’s climate, but the primary one is the geometry of the Sun-Earth relationship. The 23.5° axial tilt of the Earth to its annual plane of orbit, or ecliptic, around the Sun results in long winter nights and long summer days alternating between both polar regions and causing seasonal variations in climate. On midwinter day, about June 21, the Sun’s rays reach to only 23.5° (not exact, because of refraction) from the South Pole along the latitude of 66.5° S, a line familiarly known as the Antarctic Circle. Although “night” theoretically is six months long at the geographic pole, one month of this actually is a twilight period. Only a few coastal fringes lie north of the Antarctic Circle. The amount of incoming solar radiation, and thus heat, depends additionally on the incident angle of the rays and therefore decreases inversely with latitude to reach a minimum at the geographic poles. These and other factors are essentially the same for both polar regions. The reason for their great climatic difference primarily lies in their reverse distributions of land and sea: the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean. The Arctic Ocean, a climate-ameliorating heat source, has no counterpart at the South Pole, the great elevation and perpetually reflective snow cover of which instead intensify its polar climate. Moreover, during Antarctic winters, freezing of the surrounding sea effectively more than doubles the size of the continent and removes the oceanic heat source to nearly 1,800 miles from the central polar plateau.Outgoing terrestrial radiation greatly exceeds absorbed incoming solar radiation. This loss results in strong surface cooling, giving rise to the characteristic Antarctic temperature inversions in which temperature increases from the surface upward to about 1,000 feet above the surface. About 90 percent of the loss is replaced by atmospheric heat from lower latitudes, and the remainder by latent heat of water-vapour condensation.Great cyclonic storms circle Antarctica in endless west-to-east procession, exchanging atmospheric heat to the continent from sources in the southern Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Moist maritime air interacting with cold polar air makes the Antarctic Ocean in the vicinity of the Polar Front one of the world’s stormiest. Few storms bring snowfalls to interior regions. With few reporting stations, weather prediction has been exceedingly difficult but is now greatly aided by satellite imagery.A major focus of upper atmospheric research in Antarctica is to understand the processes leading to the annual springtime depletion in stratospheric ozone—the “ozone hole.” Ozone depletion has been steadily increasing since it was first detected in 1977. Ozone is destroyed as the result of chemical reactions on the surfaces of particles in polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). These clouds are isolated within an atmospheric circulation pattern known as the “polar vortex,” which develops during the long, cold Antarctic winter. The chemical reactions take place with the arrival of sunlight in spring and are facilitated by the presence of halogens (chlorine and fluorine), which are mostly products of human activity. This process of ozone destruction, which also occurs to a lesser extent in the Arctic, increases the amount of ultraviolet-B radiation reaching Earth’s surface, a type of radiation shown to impair photosynthesis in plants, cause an increase in skin cancer in humans, and damage DNA molecules in living things.Antarctica, and particularly the South Pole, attracts much interest in astronomical and astrophysical studies as well as research on the interactions between the Sun and the upper atmosphere of Earth. The South Pole is a unique astronomical location (a station from which the Sun can be viewed continuously in summer) sitting at a high geomagnetic latitude with unequaled atmospheric clarity. It possesses a thick section of pure material (ice) that can be used as a cosmic particle detector. Automatic geophysical observatories on the high polar plateau now record information on the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere, providing data that are critical to an understanding of Earth’s response to solar activity.The Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica (CARA) is a joint project facilitated by the United States and Germany with collaborators in other countries. CARA supports a submillimetre-wave telescope, several other telescopes, and a program to measure the properties of relict radiation left over from the big bang—useful in testing cosmological models.One of the most unique astrophysical observatories on Earth is AMANDA, the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array. This involves an array of hundreds of optical devices set at depths of up to 1.2 miles (2 km) in the ice below the South Pole. It is essentially a telescope built within the ice sheet to detect high-energy neutrinos that pass through the Earth from distant sources.GLACIERS AND SEASGLACIATIONAntarctica provides the best available picture of the probable appearance 20,000 years ago of northern North America under the great Laurentide Ice Sheet. Some scientists contend that the initial glacier that thickened over time to become the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet originated in the Gamburtsev Mountains more than 14 million years ago. Other glaciers, such as those forming in the Sentinel Range perhaps as early as 50 million years ago, advanced down valleys to calve into the sea in West Antarctica. Fringing ice shelves were built and later became grounded as glaciation intensified. Local ice caps developed, covering West Antarctic island groups as well as the mountain ranges of East Antarctica. The ice caps eventually coalesced into great ice sheets that tied together West and East Antarctica into the single continent that is known today. Except for a possible major deglaciation as recently as 3 million years ago, the continent has been largely covered by ice since the first glaciers appeared.pack ice© Armin Rose/Shutterstock.com© Armin Rose/Shutterstock.comCausal factors leading to the birth and development of these continental ice sheets and then to their decay and death are, nevertheless, still poorly understood. The factors are complexly interrelated. Moreover, once developed, ice sheets tend to form independent climatic patterns and thus to be self-perpetuating and eventually perhaps even self-destructing. Cold air masses draining off Antarctic lands, for example, cool and freeze surrounding oceans in winter to form an ice pack, which reduces solar energy input by increasing reflectivity and makes interior continental regions even more remote from sources of open oceanic heat and moisture. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet has grown to such great elevation and extent that little atmospheric moisture now nourishes its central part.Beardmore GlacierCommander Jim Waldron USNR—Antarctic Photo Library/National Science FoundationCommander Jim Waldron USNR—Antarctic Photo Library/National Science FoundationThe volume of South Polar ice must have fluctuated greatly at times since the birth of the ice sheets. Glacial erratics and glacially striated rocks on mountain summits now high above current ice-sheet levels testify to an overriding by ice at much higher levels. General lowering of levels caused some former glaciers flowing from the polar region through the Transantarctic Mountains to recede and nearly vanish, producing such spectacular “dry valleys” as the Wright, Taylor, and Victoria valleys near McMurdo Sound. Doubt has been shed on the common belief that Antarctic ice has continuously persisted since its origin by the discovery reported in 1983 of Cenozoic marine diatoms—believed to date from the Pliocene Epoch (about 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago)—in glacial till of the Beardmore Glacier area. The diatoms are believed to have been scoured from young sedimentary deposits of basins in East Antarctica and incorporated into deposits of glaciers moving through the Transantarctic Mountains. If so, Antarctica may have been free or nearly free of ice as recently as about 3 million years ago, when the diatom-bearing beds were deposited in a marine seaway; and the Antarctic Ice Sheet may have undergone deglaciations perhaps similar to those that occurred later during interglacial stages in the Northern Hemisphere. Evidence of former higher sea levels found in many areas of the Earth seems to support the hypothesis that such deglaciation occurred. If Antarctica’s ice were to melt today, for example, global sea levels would probably rise about 150 to 200 feet.The Antarctic Ice Sheet seems to be approximately in a state of equilibrium, neither increasing nor decreasing significantly according to the best estimates. Snow precipitation is offset mainly by continental ice moving seaward by three mechanisms—ice-shelf flow, ice-stream flow, and sheet flow. The greatest volume loss is by calving from shelves, particularly the Ross, Ronne, Filchner, and Amery ice shelves. Much loss also occurs by bottom melting, but this is partly compensated by a gain in mass by accretion of frozen seawater. The quantitative pattern and the balance between gain and loss are known to be different at different ice shelves, but melting probably predominates. The smaller ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula are currently retreating, breaking up into vast fields of icebergs, likely due to rising temperature and surface melting.The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been the subject of much recent research because it may be unstable. The Ross Ice Shelf is largely fed by huge ice streams descending from the WAIS along the Siple Coast. These ice streams have shown major changes—acceleration, deceleration, thickening, and thinning—in the last century or so. These alterations have affected the grounding line, where grounded glaciers lift off their beds to form ice shelves or floating glacier tongues. Changes to the grounding line may eventually transform the WAIS proper, potentially leading to removal of this ice sheet and causing a major rise in global sea level. Although the possibility of all this happening in the next 100 years is remote, major modifications in the WAIS in the 21st century are not impossible and could have worldwide effects.These ice sheets also provide unique records of past climates from atmospheric, volcanic, and cosmic fallout; precipitation amounts and chemistry; temperatures; and even samples of past atmospheres. Thus ice-core drilling, and the subsequent analysis of these cores, has provided new information on the processes that cause climate to change. A deep coring hole at the Russian station Vostok brought up a climate and fallout history extending back more than 400,000 years. Although near the bottom, drilling has stopped because a huge freshwater lake lies between the ice and the bed at this location. Lake Vostok has probably been isolated from the atmosphere for tens of millions of years, leading to speculation of what sort of life may have evolved in this unusual setting. Research is being conducted on how to answer this question without contaminating the water body. Lake Vostok has also attracted the attention of the planetary science community, because it is a possible test site for future study of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Ganymede possesses a layer of liquid water beneath a thick ice cover and thus has a potential for harbouring life.Thousands of meteorites have been discovered on “blue ice” areas of the ice sheets. Only five fragments had been found by 1969, but since then more than 9,800 have been recovered, mainly by Japanese and American scientists. Most specimens appear to have landed on Antarctic ice sheets between about 700,000 and 10,000 years ago. They were carried to blue ice areas near mountains where the ancient ice ablated and meteorites became concentrated on the surface. Most meteorites are believed to be from asteroids and a few from comets, but some are now known to be of lunar origin. Other meteorites of a rare class called shergottites had a similar origin from Mars. One of these Martian shergottites has minute structures and a chemical composition that some workers have suggested is evidence for life, though this claim is very controversial.THE SURROUNDING SEASThe seas around Antarctica have often been likened to the moat around a fortress. The turbulent “Roaring Forties” and “Furious Fifties” lie in a circumpolar storm track and a westerly oceanic current zone commonly called the West Wind Drift, or Circumpolar Current. Warm, subtropical surface currents in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans move southward in the western parts of these waters and then turn eastward upon meeting the Circumpolar Current. The warm water meets and partly mixes with cold Antarctic water, called the Antarctic Surface Water, to form a mass with intermediate characteristics called Subantarctic Surface Water. Mixing occurs in a shallow but broad zone of approximately 10° latitude lying south of the Subtropical Convergence (at about 40° S) and north of the Antarctic Convergence (between about 50° and 60° S). The Subtropical Convergence generally defines the northern limits of a water mass having so many unique physical and biological characteristics that it is often given a separate name, the Antarctic, or sometimes the Southern, Ocean; it contains about 10 percent of the global ocean volume.The two convergences are well defined and important oceanic boundary zones that profoundly affect climates, marine life, bottom sedimentation, and ice-pack and iceberg drift. They are easily identified by rapid changes in temperature and salinity. Antarctic waters are less saline than tropical waters because of their lower temperatures and lesser evaporational concentration of dissolved salts. When surface waters move southward from the Subtropical Convergence zone into the subantarctic climatic belt, their temperatures drop by as much as about 9 to 16 °F (5 to 9 °C). Across the Antarctic Convergence, from the subantarctic into the Antarctic climatic zone, surface-water temperature drops further.Whereas the pattern of surface currents, controlled largely by the Earth’s rotation, winds, water-density differences, and the geometry of basins, is relatively well understood, that of deeper water masses is more complex and less well known. North-flowing Antarctic Surface Water sinks to about 3,000 feet beneath warmer Subantarctic Surface Water along the Antarctic Convergence to become the Subantarctic Intermediate Water. This water mass, as well as the cold Antarctic Bottom Water, spreads far north beyond the Equator to exchange with waters of the Northern Hemisphere. The movement of the Antarctic Bottom Water is identifiable in the Atlantic as far north as the Bermuda Rise. Currents near the continent result in a circumferential belt of surface-water divergence accompanied by upwelling of deeper water masses.Ross Ice ShelfMichael Van Woert/National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationMichael Van Woert/National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationTwo forms of floating ice masses build out around the continent: (1) glacier-fed semipermanent ice shelves, some of enormous size, such as the Ross Ice Shelf, and (2) an annually frozen and melted ice pack that in winter reaches to about 56° S in the Atlantic and 64° S in the Pacific. Antarctica has been called the pulsating continent because of the annual buildup and retreat of its secondary ice-fronted coastline. Pushed by winds and currents, the ice pack is in continual motion. This movement is westward in the coastal belt of the East Wind Drift at the continent edge and eastward (farther north) at the belt of the West Wind Drift. Icebergs—calved fragments of glaciers and ice shelves—reach a northern limit at about the Subtropical Convergence. With an annual areal variation about six times as great as that for the Arctic ice pack, the Antarctic pack doubtless plays a far greater role in varying heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere and thus probably in altering global weather patterns. Long-term synoptic studies, now aided by satellite imagery, show long-period thinning in the Antarctic ice-pack regimen possibly related to global climate changes.As part of the Deep Sea Drilling Project conducted from 1968 to 1983 by the U.S. government, the drilling ship Glomar Challenger undertook several cruises of Antarctic and subantarctic waters to gather and study materials on and below the ocean floor. Expeditions included one between Australia and the Ross Sea (1972–73); one in the area south of New Zealand (1973); one from southern Chile to the Bellingshausen Sea (1974); and two in the Drake Passage and Falkland Islands area (1974 and 1979–80). Among the ship’s most significant findings were hydrocarbons discovered in sediments of Paleogene and Neogene age (i.e., some 66 million to 2.6 million years old) in the Ross Sea and rocks carried by icebergs from Antarctica found in late Oligocene sediments (those roughly 28 to 23 million years old) at numerous locations. Researchers inferred from these ice-borne debris that Antarctica was glaciated at least 25 million years ago.Internationally funded drilling operations began in 1985 with the Ocean Drilling Program, using the new drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution to expand earlier Glomar Challenger studies. Studies in the Weddell Sea (1986–87) suggested that surface waters were warm during Late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic time and that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet did not form until about 10 million to 5 million years ago, which is much later than inferred from evidence on the continent itself. Drilling of the Kerguelen Plateau near the Amery Ice Shelf (1987–88) entailed the study of the rifting history of the Indian-Australian Plate from East Antarctica and revealed that this submerged plateau—the world’s largest such feature—is of oceanic origin and not a continental fragment, as had been previously thought.PLANT LIFEAntarctic hairgrassCopyright Robert W. Hernandez/Photo ResearchersCopyright Robert W. Hernandez/Photo ResearchersThe cold desert climate of Antarctica supports only an impoverished community of cold-tolerant land plants that are capable of surviving lengthy winter periods of total or near-total darkness during which photosynthesis cannot take place. Growth must occur in short summer bursts lasting only a few days, a few weeks, or a month or two, depending upon such diverse factors as latitude, seasonal snowpacks, elevation, topographic orientation, wind, and moisture, in both the substrate and the atmosphere. Moisture is the most important single variable and is provided mainly by atmospheric water vapour and by local melt supplies from fallen snow, drift snow, and permafrost. Stream runoff is exceedingly rare. Extreme cold, high winds, and aridity inhibit growth even in summer in most areas. There are, however, certain areas at high latitude and high elevation that have local microclimates formed by differential solar heating of dark surfaces, and these areas are able to support life. The importance of such microclimates was demonstrated by the second Byrd Antarctic Expedition (1933–35), which found that lichens in Marie Byrd Land grow preferentially on darker-coloured heat-absorbing rock.Antarctic plants total about 800 species, of which 350 are lichens. Lichens, although slow-growing, are particularly well adapted to Antarctic survival. They can endure lengthy high-stress periods in dormancy and almost instantly become photosynthetic when conditions improve. Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), totaling about 100 species, predominate in maritime regions, but mosses can grow nearly everywhere that lichens grow. Liverworts are reported only from coastal and maritime regions. Numerous species of molds, yeasts, and other fungi, as well as freshwater algae and bacteria, complete the listing of Antarctic plants. These forms are extremely widespread and are reported as far as latitude 87° S. In addition, Antarctic seas are highly productive in plankton plant life, particularly in near-shore, nutrient-rich zones of upwelling. Diatoms, a type of algae, are especially abundant.Although soils are essentially not of humic type, they commonly are not sterile either, in that they may contain such microorganisms as bacteria or a variety of blue-green algae. The blue-green algae Nostoc locally contribute minor organic compounds to soils.Today’s barren Antarctic landscape little resembles ancient Paleozoic and Mesozoic ones with their far greater floral displays. Antarctic glaciation, probably beginning 50 million years ago, forced the northward migration of all vascular plants (ferns, conifers, and flowering plants). Only nonwoody forms have again populated subantarctic regions and have scarcely repenetrated the Antarctic zone.Unlike Antarctica, lying south of the Antarctic Convergence, the islands north of the Convergence in the subantarctic botanical zone—including the South Georgia, Crozet, Kerguelen, and Macquarie islands—are characterized by an abundance of vascular plants of many species, at least 50 being identified on South Georgia alone. Whereas plants reproducing by spores are characteristic of Antarctica, seed plants chiefly characterize subantarctic regions.Humans have greatly influenced the natural ecosystem in many Antarctic and subantarctic regions. Alien species of vascular plants near whaling stations have been introduced, and doubtless many alien microorganisms exist near all Antarctic stations. Alien herbivores, chiefly sheep and rabbits, have decimated plant communities on many subantarctic islands. Rabbits have exterminated the native cabbage Pringlea antiscorbutica over wide areas on Kerguelen, and sheep have decimated tussock communities on South Georgia. Increasing numbers of tourists will have an impact on Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem.ANIMAL LIFELAND FAUNAThe native land fauna is wholly invertebrate. Apparently climatically less tolerant and less easily dispersed, the fauna follows plant colonization of newly deglaciated regions and therefore is not as widely distributed. The Antarctic microfauna includes heliozoans, rotifers, tardigrades, nematodes, and ciliate protozoans. The protozoans dominate soil and freshwater communities. The terrestrial macrofauna consists entirely of arthropods, many species being parasitic on birds and seals. The principal arthropod groups represented include Acarina (mites), Mallophaga (biting lice), Collembola (springtails), Anoplura (sucking lice), Diptera (midges), and Siphonaptera (fleas). Two species of beetles, probably alien, are known from islands near the Antarctic Peninsula. The dominant free-living forms, mites and springtails, live under stones and are associated with spore-reproducing plants.BIRDSemperor penguinMichael C.T. Smith—The National Audubon Society Collection/Photo ResearchersMichael C.T. Smith—The National Audubon Society Collection/Photo Researchersgentoo penguin© lfstewart/Fotolia© lfstewart/Fotoliapenguin: Adélie penguins and leopard sealsStockbyte/ThinkstockStockbyte/ThinkstockAbout 45 species of birds live south of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three—the emperor penguin, Antarctic petrel, and South Polar (McCormick’s) skua—breed exclusively on the continent or on nearby islands. An absence of mammalian land predators and the rich offshore food supply make Antarctic coasts a haven for immense seabird rookeries. Penguins, of the order Sphenisciformes, symbolize this polar region, though they live on seacoasts throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Of the 18 living species (of which two may be only subspecies), only the Adélie and emperor live along the Antarctic coastline. The habitats of five other polar species—king, chinstrap, gentoo, rockhopper, and macaroni—extend only as far south as the northern Antarctic Peninsula and subantarctic islands. The evolution of these flightless birds has been traced to the Eocene Epoch, about 40 million years ago, using fossils found on Seymour Island, off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and at a few other places. The largest modern penguin, the emperor, standing between three and four feet in height, would be dwarfed by some of its extinct New Zealand and Seymour Island relatives, the fossil bones of which indicate that they reached heights up to five feet seven inches. Some authorities believe that penguins may have a shared ancestry with other birds of Antarctica, capable of flight, from the order Procellariiformes. Birds of that order, mainly species of petrels but also a few of albatrosses, make up more than half of the Antarctic and subantarctic breeding species. Other birds of the region include species of cormorants, pintails, gulls, terns, sheathbills, and pipits.Banding and recovery studies show that some Antarctic birds travel throughout the world. Rare sightings of skuas and petrels far in the continental interior, even near the South Pole, suggest that these powerful birds may occasionally cross the continent. Experiments show that Antarctic birds, including the flightless penguin, have strong homing instincts and excellent navigational capability; they apparently have a highly developed sun-azimuth orientation system and biological clock mechanism that functions even with the sun remaining continuously high. Adélie penguins released as far as 1,900 miles from their nests, for example, are known to have returned within a year.Feeding habits vary widely from species to species. Most depend on the abundantly provisioned larder of the sea. The seabirds feed mainly on crustacea, fish, and squid, mostly at the surface or, in the case of cormorants and penguins, at depths of up to about 150 feet. Shorebirds forage for mollusks, echinoderms, and littoral crustacea. Sheathbills, the southern black-backed gull, giant petrels, and skuas feed occasionally, as allowed, on other birds’ unguarded eggs. The voracious skua and giant petrel are even known to attack the young or weak of other species, particularly penguins.Dependent upon seafood, most birds leave the continent each autumn and follow Antarctica’s “secondary” coastline as the ice pack builds northward. The emperor penguins, however, are the exception and remain behind as solitary guardians (other than humans) of the continent through the long winter night. The emperors, once thought rare, are now estimated to number more than one million in about 25 known colonies.SEA LIFESouthern Ocean: new species3:13Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzContunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzThe prolific zooplankton of Antarctic waters feed on the copious phytoplankton and, in turn, form the basic diet of whales, seals, fish, squid, and seabirds. The Antarctic waters, because of their upwelled nutrients, are more than seven times as productive as subantarctic waters. The most important organism in the higher food chain is the small, shrimplike krill, Euphausia superba, only an inch or two in length when mature. But for their habit of congregating in vast, dense schools, they would have little food value for the large whales and seals. Their densities are great, however, and a whale, with built-in nets of baleen and hairlike fibres, can strain out meals of a ton or more in a few minutes. During the three to four months spent in Antarctic waters, the original population of baleen whales alone could consume an estimated 150 million tons of krill. Animals on the sea bottom of the nearshore zone include the sessile hydrozoans, corals, sponges, and bryozoans, as well as the foraging, crablike pycnogonids and isopods, the annelid worm polychaeta, echinoids, starfish, and a variety of crustaceans and mollusks. Winter and anchor ice, however, keep the sublittoral zone relatively barren to about 50 feet in depth.Of the nearly 20,000 kinds of modern fish, no more than about 100 are known from seas south of the Antarctic Convergence. Nearly three-fourths of the 90 or so sea-bottom species belong to the superfamily Notothenioidea, the Antarctic perches. At sea bottom there are also the Zoarcidae, or eel-pouts; the Liparidae, or sea snails; the Macrouridae, or rat-tailed fishes; and the Gadidae, or codlike fishes. Rare nonbony types in the Antarctic zone include hagfish and skates. Many species of deep-sea fish are known south of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three, a barracuda and two lantern fishes, seem to be confined to this zone. Antarctic fishes are well adapted to the cold waters; the bottom fish are highly endemic, 90 percent of the species being found nowhere else. This supports other biological and geologic evidence that Antarctica has been isolated for a very long time.Antarctic native mammals are all marine and include seals (pinnipeds), porpoises, dolphins, and whales (cetaceans). Only one otariid, or fur seal, breeds south of the Antarctic Convergence; four species of phocids, or true seals—the gregarious Weddell seal, the ubiquitous crabeater seal, the solitary and aggressively carnivorous leopard seal, and the rarely seen Ross seal—breed almost exclusively in the Antarctic zone, and another, the southern elephant seal, breeds near the Convergence at South Georgia, Kerguelen, and Macquarie islands. The sea lion, an otariid, is plentiful in the Falkland Islands but probably never ventures into the cold Antarctic waters. The fur seal and the elephant seal are now regenerating after near extinction. Weddell seals are thought to number about 500,000, the crabeater about 5,000,000 to 6,000,000, and the Ross seals about 50,000. Weddell seals are unique in being able to survive under fast ice, even in winter, by maintaining open breathing holes with their teeth. The leopard seal, armed with powerful jaws and huge canines, is one of the few predators of adult penguins. A number of mummified seal carcasses, chiefly crabeaters, have been found at distances of nearly 30 miles from the sea and elevations up to about 3,000 feet in the McMurdo dry valleys. Finding no food in such inland wanderings, the crabeaters eventually died, and their leathery carcasses were preserved by the coldness and aridity of the climate.Whales and their cetacean relatives, porpoises and dolphins, range widely from Arctic to Antarctic waters and are found in all oceans and seas. A number of species range to, but generally not across, the Antarctic Convergence and so are considered only peripheral Antarctic types. Among the fish- and squid-eating toothed whales, or odontocetes, are a few peripheral Antarctic porpoises and dolphins and the pilot whale. More typical of Antarctic waters are the killer whale, sperm whale, and rare bottle-nosed, or beaked, whale. Seven species of baleen, or whalebone, whales also inhabit Antarctic waters, subsisting on the plentiful krill; these include the southern right whale, the humpback whale, and four kinds of rorqual—the blue whale, fin whale, sei whale, and lesser rorqual, or minke. The pygmy right whale is endemic to Antarctic and subantarctic waters. The killer whale, one of the most intelligent of marine animals, hunts in packs and feeds on larger animals, such as fish, penguins and other aquatic birds, seals, dolphins, and other whales. Despite its name, there have been no authenticated accounts of attacks on humans near Antarctica. Excessive slaughter in the past has drastically decimated stocks of the larger whales, particularly the giant blue whales. Near extinction, the blue whales have been protected by international agreement.Alien mammals that now reside semipermanently in Antarctic and subantarctic regions include sheep, rabbits, dogs, cats, rats, mice, and human beings. Effects on local ecosystems are great, from pollution of station areas by human wastes to erosion from overgrazing by sheep and to decimation of bird populations by dogs and cats and of whale and fur-seal stocks by humans. Even so, Antarctica remains by far the least contaminated land on Earth. Under the Antarctic Treaty, it is designated as a special conservation area, and many former human activities have been prohibited in an attempt to preserve the natural ecological system of the unique environment.Economic resourcesEXPLORATION FOR RESOURCESAntarctica, it has been suggested, may have become a continent for science because it was useful for nothing else. Certainly, the great success of the Antarctic Treaty and of the political experiment in international cooperation is in no small way attributable to the fact that exploitable mineral resources have not been found. Articles of the original treaty (signed in 1959; entered into force in 1961) did not exclude economic activities, but neither did they set up jurisdictional procedures in the event that any were undertaken (see below History).Increasing economic pressures have forced mineral and petroleum exploration into more and more remote regions as resources have gradually become depleted in other, more accessible lands. It is likely that market and technological conditions will make it economically feasible to carry the search to Antarctica and its continental shelves. The political volatility of the resource question, especially the problems of rights of ownership and development, has prompted proposals that range from sharing any found mineral wealth equally among nations to establishing the continent as a world park.Most early Antarctic expeditions through the 19th century were directly or indirectly of economic incentive. For some, it was the search for new trading routes; for others, it meant the opening of new fur-sealing grounds; still others saw a possibility of mineral riches. The exploitation of natural resources has centred in the subantarctic and Antarctic seas, and virtually none has yet occurred on the continent. In one analysis of resource potentials, “Antarctic natural resources” were defined as “any natural materials or characteristics (in the Antarctic region) of significance to man.” By this broad definition, the term includes not only biological and mineral resources but also the land itself, water, ice, climate, and space for living and working, recreation, and storage. “Economic” resources are those that can be used or exported at a cost that is less than their value. Any attempted appraisal must therefore be continually reevaluated in terms of current market values, logistical costs, and technological developments. Few known Antarctic resources have any economic importance in terms of present-day estimates of these factors. The factors are complexly interrelated and difficult to assess for the present, let alone the future. For example, technological advances that could allow development in Antarctica might instead allow development of what are considered marginally economic resources in other regions. Moreover, by the time it might become feasible to develop an Antarctic resource, such as petroleum, other suppliers for the market might be found, such as, in this case, fusion reactors or solar or geothermal energy, which would greatly change cost factors.MINERAL RESOURCESThe geology of Antarctica is known sufficiently well to allow rather certain prediction of the existence of a variety of mineral deposits, some probably large. The fact that none of significant size, besides coal in the Transantarctic Mountains and iron near the Prince Charles Mountains of East Antarctica, is known to exist is largely the result of inadequate sampling. With the amount of ice-free terrain in Antarctica estimated at somewhere between 1 and 5 percent, the probability is practically nonexistent that a potential ore body would be exposed. Moreover, whereas generations of prospectors have combed temperate and even Arctic mountains, Antarctic mountains have been visited mostly by reconnaissance parties on scientific missions since the IGY.The high degree of certainty that mineral deposits do exist is based on the close geologic similarities that have been observed between areas of Antarctica and of mineral-rich provinces of South America, South Africa, and Australia and on the consensus that has been reached on the configuration of the Gondwanaland landmass during Mesozoic times. The gold-producing Witwatersrand beds of South Africa may correspond to the terranes of western Queen Maud Land. The young mountain belt of the copper-rich South American Andes continues southward, looping through the Scotia Arc into the Antarctic Peninsula and probably beyond into Ellsworth Land. The mostly ice-covered areas of Wilkes Land may parallel the gold-producing greenstone belts and platinum-bearing intrusions of southwestern Australia. The Dufek intrusion, an immense layered gabbroic complex in the northern Pensacola Mountains, is geologically similar to, though much younger than, the Bushveld complex of South Africa, which is a leading producer of platinum-group metals, chromium, and other resources. Mineral occurrences have been found in some of these Antarctic areas, including antimony, chromium, copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, tin, uranium, and zinc. None approaches a grade or size warranting economic interest. Also noneconomic are the very large deposits of coal and sedimentary iron. Because of the high costs of polar operations, few conceivable resources—excepting those with high unit value such as platinum, gold, and perhaps diamonds—have any likelihood for exploitation.Offshore resources of petroleum, however, are a different matter. The finding of gaseous hydrocarbons in cores drilled in the Ross Sea by the Glomar Challenger in 1973 aroused considerable international interest. Cruises of the U.S. research vessel Eltanin had by then made a number of reconnaissance geophysical studies investigating the nature of the Antarctic continental margin. Since the late 1970s oceanographic research ships of many nations, including those of France, Germany (West Germany until 1990), Japan, and the United States, have undertaken detailed studies of the structure of the continental margin, using the sophisticated geophysical techniques of seismic reflection and gravity and magnetic surveys. Thicknesses of sedimentary rock needed for sizable petroleum accumulations may occur in continental-margin areas of the Ross, Amundsen, Bellingshausen, and Weddell seas and perhaps near the Amery Ice Shelf; and some may also exist in inland basins covered by continental ice, particularly in West Antarctica. It seems unlikely, however, that fields of a size needed for exploitation are present. If they should be found, any petroleum extraction would be difficult but not impossible in the offshore areas, as technologies have been developed for drilling for and recovering petroleum in Arctic regions. Drill ships and platforms would be more severely affected by iceberg drift and moving ice packs than in the Arctic. Icebergs are commonly far larger than those in the Arctic and have deeper keels; they scour the seafloor at deeper levels and would be more likely to damage seafloor installations such as wellheads, pipelines, and mooring systems. These problems, though great, are far fewer than those that would be encountered in developing inland mineral resources of any kind. Thus, although petroleum is generally considered to be the most likely prospect for exploitation in Antarctica, there is little potential for its development before reserves are consumed from more accessible areas throughout the world. Even if accidentally found through scientific studies, mineral resources cannot now be commercially explored or exploited under a 1991 agreement by the United States and other Antarctic Treaty nations (see below History).BIOLOGICAL RESOURCESResources of the sea first attracted people to Antarctica and provided the only basis for commercial activity in this region for many years. Commercial fur sealing began about 1766 in the Falkland Islands and rapidly spread to all subantarctic islands in the zeal to supply the wealthy markets of Europe and China. Immense profits were made, but the toll was equally immense. Early accounts relate that millions of skins were taken from the Falklands during the mid-1780s. Within a century, however, the herds of fur seals had disappeared. Elephant seals were then hunted for their oil, and, as their numbers dwindled, the sealers turned to whaling. During the 20th century herds of some whale species (notably blue, fin, and sei) were largely driven from Antarctic waters, but commercial whaling was not effectively curtailed until catch quotas were imposed in the 1970s and 1980s. Populations of many species of seals and whales have been regenerating. In 1994 the 40-nation International Whaling Commission permanently banned whaling in all waters south of Australia, Africa, and South America, a ruling that assures population increases and creates an immense sanctuary covering nearly one-fourth of the world’s oceans.Commercial fishing, although little developed before 1970, has been rising in significance since then, especially with the increased use of factory ships, which can catch and process large quantities of fish. Catches of one species of Antarctic cod (Notothenia rossii) have been as high as 400,000 tons, prompting concerns about overfishing in Antarctic waters. Fishing for Antarctic krill, which live in almost unfathomable abundance in the nutrient-rich polar waters, has shown only minor commercial activity. In October 2016 the creation of a marine protected area in the Ross Sea eliminated commercial fishing from a zone covering some 600,000 square miles (1,600,000 square km) of ocean, beginning in December 2017.OTHER RESOURCESA rich imagination can see many possible uses of Antarctica and its materials. The continental ice sheet contains nearly 90 percent of the world’s glacial ice—a huge potential supply of fresh water—but any economic value is precluded by delivery costs. Antarctica has been proposed as a long-term deep-freeze storage site for grain and other foods, but calculations show that such usage cannot be economic, because of excessive shipping, handling, and investment costs. The Antarctic Treaty prevents the continent from being used as a site for radioactive-waste disposal and storage. Antarctica and its nearby islands could play an important role in wartime, particularly in the Scotia Sea region and Drake Passage, for control of interocean shipping. In 1940–41, for example, German commerce raiders made considerable use of Kerguelen Island for this purpose. The Antarctic Treaty rules out military use, however, and the increasing capability of long-range aircraft, rocketry, and satellite surveillance and reentry decreases the possible military importance of Antarctica.gentoo penguin: tourists observing a group of gentoo penguinsRyan T. Pierse/Getty ImagesRyan T. Pierse/Getty ImagesAntarctica contains abundant scenic resources, and these have been increasingly exploited since the late 1950s. The tourist industry began in a modest way in January and February 1958, with tours to the Antarctic Peninsula area arranged by the Argentine Naval Transport Command. Since January 1966, yearly tourist ships have plied Antarctic coastal waters, stopping here and there for visits at scientific stations and at penguin rookeries. The number of visits by cruise ships has increased, and in the mid-1970s sightseeing flights by commercial airliners were inaugurated. Tourist overflights lost popularity, however, after the November 1979 crash of a New Zealand airliner into Mount Erebus (Ross Island), with the loss of all 257 passengers and crew. The 1990–91 summer season alone saw more than 4,800 tourist visitors. Some 40,000 tourists had visited Antarctica by the mid-1990s, principally by tour boats to the northern Antarctic Peninsula. A handful of more adventurous tourists have ventured into or across the continental interior by ski, dog team, or private aircraft.photographing penguins at Neko Harbor, Antarctica0:18Joe Capra—ScientifantasticJoe Capra—ScientifantasticPolar visionaries once imagined an all-weather landing strip for wheeled jet aircraft at Marble Point near McMurdo Sound; one or more hotels nearby, perhaps in one of the McMurdo dry valleys and served by helicopter from the jet runway; and possibly even a centre for skiing and mountaineering. With such facilities, they believed, greatly increased numbers of tourists could be brought to the continent. New technologies for landing large wheeled aircraft on inland ice sheets have opened possibilities for tourist facilities in many parts of Antarctica. Permanent accommodations for tourists ashore seem inevitable, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula. The flourishing tourist industry, however, has few controls under present Antarctic Treaty regulations. Parties to the treaty are studying effects of tourism in order to provide regulations for ensuring protection of Antarctica’s highly sensitive ecosystem. Safeguarding penguin rookeries that particularly attract tourist photographers is of special concern. Problems created by the increasing tourism include sewage and waste disposal, the need for search and rescue facilities (a few tourist ships have gone aground or have been trapped in ice, requiring help), and a system for handling the civil and criminal cases that will inevitably arise.HistoryA great many nations, large and small, played important roles in the discovery and exploration of Antarctica. Who first saw the continent is controversial. The Russian expedition leader Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, the Englishman Edward Bransfield, and the American Nathaniel Palmer all claim first sightings in 1820: Bellingshausen sighted a shelf edge of continental ice on January 20; two days later Bransfield caught sight of land that the British later considered to be a mainland part of the Antarctic Peninsula; and on November 18 Palmer unequivocally saw the mainland-peninsula side of Orleans Strait.About 650 ce, however, long before European geographers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were to conjecture about the mythical Terra Australis, Maori legend tells of a New Zealand Polynesian war canoe, under the command of one Ui-te-Rangiora, that sailed at least as far south as the frozen ocean. The legendary vast size of the continent shrank to nearly its present one when in 1772–75 the Englishman James Cook circumnavigated the globe in high southern latitude, proving that Terra Australis, if it existed at all, lay somewhere beyond the ice packs that he discovered between about 60° and 70° S.Early scientific progressThe period from the 1760s to about 1900 was one dominated by exploitation of Antarctic and subantarctic seas, particularly along Scotia Ridge. Sealing vessels of many nations, principally American and British but including Argentine, Australian, South African, New Zealand, German, and Norwegian, participated in hunting that eventually led to near extinction of the southern fur seal. Many also hunted whales, and the less profitable whaling industry climaxed following World War I after the decline of sealing. Among the few geographic and scientific expeditions that stand out during this period are those of Bellingshausen, commanding the Russian ships Vostok and Mirny, in the first close-in circumnavigation of Antarctica in 1819–21; Bransfield, on a British expedition charting part of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1819–20; Dumont d’Urville, on a French expedition in 1837–40, when Adélie Land was discovered and claimed for France; Charles Wilkes, on a U.S. naval expedition in 1838–42 that explored a large section of the East Antarctic coast; and James Clark Ross, on a British expedition in 1839–43 that discovered the Ross Sea and Ross Ice Barrier (now called Ross Ice Shelf) as well as the coast of Victoria Land.The “heroic era” of explorationDuring the first two decades of the 20th century, commonly called the “heroic era” of Antarctic exploration, great advances were made in not only geographic but also scientific knowledge of the continent. The Englishmen Robert F. Scott and Ernest Henry Shackleton led three expeditions between 1901 and 1913, pioneering routes into the interior and making important geologic, glaciological, and meteorologic discoveries that provided a firm foundation for present-day scientific programs. This era was preceded by two events that proved the feasibility of Antarctic overwintering: (1) the Belgian ship Belgica, under command of Adrien de Gerlache, became the first vessel to winter in Antarctic waters when, from March 1898 to March 1899, it was trapped and drifted in pack ice of the Bellingshausen Sea, and (2) a scientific party under Carsten E. Borchgrevink spent the next winter camped at Cape Adare, for the first planned overwintering on the continent.Sledge probes deep into the interior were made by Scott on the British National Antarctic Discovery Expedition (1901–04) and by Shackleton on the British Antarctic Nimrod Expedition (1907–09) from base camps on Ross Island. New southing records were set by Scott, in company with Shackleton and E.A. Wilson, who reached 82°17′ S on Ross Ice Shelf on December 30, 1902, and by Shackleton in a party of five, which reached 88°23′ S, a point about 97 nautical miles from the pole, on January 9, 1909. The aerial age in Antarctica was presaged by Scott in 1902, who went aloft in a captive balloon for aerial reconnaissance, and the mechanical age by Shackleton in 1908, who used an automobile at Cape Royds, Ross Island. The experimental use of hardy Manchurian ponies and the pioneering of a route up the great Beardmore Glacier to the polar plateau by Shackleton paved the way for the epic sledging trip of Scott in 1911–12 to the South Pole.Discovery of the Antarctic poles

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Antarctica, fifth in size among the world’s continents. Its landmass is almost wholly covered by a vast ice sheet.Transantarctic MountainsHannes GrobeHannes GrobeLying almost concentrically around the South Pole, Antarctica—the name of which means “opposite to the Arctic”—is the southernmost continent, a circumstance that has had momentous consequences for all aspects of its character. It covers about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km), and would be essentially circular except for the outflaring Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches toward the southern tip of South America (some 600 miles [970 km] away), and for two principal embayments, the Ross Sea and the Weddell Sea. These deep embayments of the southernmost Pacific and Atlantic oceans make the continent somewhat pear-shaped, dividing it into two unequal-sized parts. The larger is generally known as East Antarctica because most of it lies in east longitudes. The smaller, wholly in west longitudes, is generally called West Antarctica. East and West Antarctica are separated by the 1,900-mile-long Transantarctic Mountains. Whereas East Antarctica consists largely of a high, ice-covered plateau, West Antarctica consists of an archipelago of mountainous islands covered and bonded together by ice.icebergiStockphoto/ThinkstockiStockphoto/ThinkstockThe continental ice sheet contains approximately 7 million cubic miles (29 million cubic km) of ice, representing about 90 percent of the world’s total. The average thickness is about 1.5 miles (2.45 km). Many parts of the Ross and Weddell seas are covered by ice shelves, or ice sheets floating on the sea. These shelves—the Ross Ice Shelf and the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—together with other shelves around the continental margins, constitute about 10 percent of the area of Antarctic ice. Around the Antarctic coast, shelves, glaciers, and ice sheets continually “calve,” or discharge, icebergs into the seas.South Pole: Amundsen-Scott South Pole StationBill SpindlerBill SpindlerBecause of this vast ice, the continent supports only a primitive indigenous population of cold-adapted land plants and animals. The surrounding sea is as rich in life as the land is barren. With the decline of whaling and sealing, the only economic base in the past, Antarctica now principally exports the results of scientific investigations that lead to a better understanding of the total world environment. The present scale of scientific investigation of Antarctica began with the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957–58. Although early explorations were nationalistic, leading to territorial claims, modern ones have come under the international aegis of the Antarctic Treaty. This treaty, which was an unprecedented landmark in diplomacy when it was signed in 1959 by 12 nations, preserves the continent for nonmilitary scientific pursuits.Antarctica, the most remote and inaccessible continent, is no longer as unknown as it was at the start of IGY. All its mountain regions have been mapped and visited by geologists, geophysicists, glaciologists, and biologists. Some mapping data are now obtained by satellite rather than by observers on the surface. Many hidden ranges and peaks are known from geophysical soundings of the Antarctic ice sheets. By using radio-echo sounding instruments, systematic aerial surveys of the ice-buried terrains can be made.The ice-choked and stormy seas around Antarctica long hindered exploration by wooden-hulled ships. No lands break the relentless force of the prevailing west winds as they race clockwise around the continent, dragging westerly ocean currents along beneath. The southernmost parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans converge into a cold, oceanic water mass with singularly unique biologic and physical characteristics. Early penetration of this Southern (or Antarctic) Ocean, as it has been called, in the search for fur seals led in 1820 to the discovery of the continent. Icebreakers and aircraft now make access relatively easy, although still not without hazard in stormy conditions. Many tourists have visited Antarctica, and it seems likely that, at least in the short run, scenic resources have greater potential for economic development than do mineral and biological resources.The term Antarctic regions refers to all areas—oceanic, island, and continental—lying in the cold Antarctic climatic zone south of the Antarctic Convergence, an important boundary with little seasonal variability, where warm subtropical waters meet and mix with cold polar waters. For legal purposes of the Antarctic Treaty, the arbitrary boundary of latitude 60° S is used. The familiar map boundaries of the continent known as Antarctica, defined as the South Polar landmass and all its nonfloating grounded ice, are subject to change with future changes of climate. The continent was ice-free during most of its lengthy geologic history, and there is no reason to believe it will not become so again in the probably distant future.Physical geographyThe landGEOLOGIC RECORDANTARCTICA AND CONTINENTAL DRIFTThe geologic evolution of Antarctica has followed a course similar to that of the other southern continents. The earliest chapters in Antarctica’s rather fragmentary record extend far back, perhaps as much as 3 billion years, into early Precambrian time. Similarity in patterns of crustal and biological evolution in the southern continents can be traced back some 150 million years, and evolutionary courses began to diverge conspicuously by about 70 million years ago, in the late Mesozoic Era. Plant and animal migration routes that apparently had interconnected all the southern continents were largely cut off by the outset of the Cenozoic Era (i.e., about 66 million years ago). Antarctica became isolated at a time when land mammals diversified and flourished elsewhere, populating all the other continents of the world. Antarctica had long been thought to be a migratory path for marsupials moving between southern continents in early Cenozoic time. But documentation for the theory was not discovered until 1982, when the first mammal remains, a marsupial fossil, were found on Seymour Island in the Weddell Sea. The subsequent growth of Antarctica’s ice sheets cut off any further migrations by land animals.Now bathed by polar ice, Antarctica has abundant fossil evidence that its climate and terrain at one time supported far more populous flora and fauna than today’s few seedless plants and primitive insects. Much of Antarctica was densely forested in Mesozoic times (about 252 million to 66 million years ago), dominated by southern conifers of podocarps and araucarias, with undergrowth of rainforest-type ferns. Angiosperm trees, particularly the southern beech, Nothofagus, appeared during the Cretaceous Period (about 145 to 66 million years ago) and lingered in places until about 2 million years ago as Antarctica drifted poleward, cooled, and became glaciated. Remains of luxuriant extinct floras, as well as fossils of Mesozoic reptiles, dinosaurs, and amphibians, have been discovered, and these compare so closely to those of other southern continents that many geologists have postulated former contiguity of these lands in a single giant continent called Gondwana. Continental stratigraphic evidence and the dating of seafloors seem to indicate that the supercontinent broke apart along Jurassic rift faults 180 to 160 million years ago, and fragments such as Africa and Australia separated from Antarctica in Jurassic to Cretaceous time (about 201 to 66 million years ago) and in the early Cenozoic Era. Early stages of rifting were marked by immense outpourings of plateau lavas (Kirkpatrick Basalt, on Mount Kirkpatrick) and by related sill intrusions (Ferrar Dolerites) across Antarctica, including one of the world’s largest layered gabbroic igneous complexes, the Dufek intrusion, in the Pensacola Mountains.Modern theory ties mobile zones to the interaction and jostling of immense crustal plates (see plate tectonics). Modern plate boundaries may be far different from ancient ones presumably marked by old fold belts. Ancient Antarctic mobile belts, such as are followed by today’s Transantarctic Mountains, terminate at continental margins abruptly, as if sliced off, and seemingly reappear in other lands across young ocean basins. Much research has been concentrated on attempting to match intercontinentally the detailed structure of opposed coasts, such as between Antarctica and Australia, in an effort to learn whether they had been actually connected before the latest cycle of crustal spreading from intervening mid-oceanic ridges. Similarities between ancient mobile belts now suggest to some geologists that Antarctica may even have been connected to southwestern North America more than 600 million years ago, in late Precambrian time.STRUCTURAL FRAMEWORKMost of the Antarctic geologic record lies hidden beneath the vast regions of snow and ice that make up more than 95 percent of the continent’s surface terrain. No one knows what important segments of the record lie concealed in buried ranges such as the Gamburtsev Mountains, the topography of which has been mapped only by seismic reflections through the great East Antarctic Ice Sheet. The extraordinarily thick cover, the extremely difficult working conditions, and the tremendous expense of mounting expeditions into remote areas have long held geologic knowledge of Antarctica far behind that of other continents. Great advances by geologists of many Antarctic Treaty nations, however, have yielded geologic maps of at least reconnaissance scale for virtually all exposed mountain areas.From results mainly of British expeditions early in the 20th century, the concept arose that Antarctica is made up of two structural provinces—a long, stable Precambrian shield in East Antarctica and a much younger Mesozoic and Cenozoic mobile belt in West Antarctica—separated by the fault-block belt, or horst, of the Transantarctic Mountains. East and West Antarctica have come to be known respectively as the Gondwana and Andean provinces, indicating general affinities of each sector with other regions—that is, the east seems to have affinity with the Gondwana region of peninsular India, and the west seems to represent a southerly continuation of the South American Andes. As new expeditions study and restudy each range in ever-increasing detail, concepts of the geologic structure are continually modified. Antarctica’s structural record is now known to be more complex than that implied in the past.The average thickness of the terrestrial crust for both East and West Antarctica approximates that of other continents. Although it has been postulated that West Antarctica might be an oceanic island archipelago if the ice were to melt, its crustal thickness of about 20 miles indicates an absence of oceanic structure. This thickness is similar to that of coastal parts of other continents. The crust thickens sharply along the Transantarctic Mountains front, possibly a deep crustal fault system, and averages about 25 miles thick in East Antarctica. Significant earthquakes are not recorded along this or other known faults in Antarctica, the most seismically quiet of all continents, in which mostly minor activity is associated with surrounding oceanic ridges or volcanoes. However, the occurrence of one unusually large earthquake of magnitude 6.4 in the Bellingshausen Sea in 1977 suggests that the Antarctic Plate may have greater seismicity than generally believed.The ancient crust of Antarctica must have been highly mobile and the configuration of the continent many hundreds of millions of years ago in the Precambrian far different from today’s. Ancient marine and lake basins were filled with a variety of sedimentary and volcanic debris eroded from primeval lands. During mountain-building episodes these materials were complexly deformed and recrystallized deep within the crust to form, particularly in East Antarctica, great crystalline-rock complexes. At the surface, rocks were uplifted and mountains were carved by erosion as sediments filled new basins and new folds of the Earth’s crust were formed. Again and again this cycle was repeated during the evolution of Antarctica. Mobility ceased approximately 400 million years ago in the Transantarctic Mountains. Between that time, in the Devonian Period (about 419 million to 359 million years ago), and the Late Jurassic Epoch (which began about 164 million years ago), a series of mainly quartzose sediments was laid down in ancient lakes and shallow seas in the sites of former mountain chains that had been carved away by erosion. Known as the Beacon Sandstone, this formation of platform sediments contains a rich record of extinct Antarctic life-forms, including freshwater fish fossils in Devonian rocks; ancient temperate forests, of Glossopteris trees in coal deposits of Permian age (about 299 million to 252 million years old) and Dicroidium trees in Triassic-age coals (those roughly 252 million to 201 million years old); and large reptiles, such as Lystrosaurus, and amphibians in Triassic rocks. In 1990–91 the first dinosaur fossils were found in the Transantarctic Mountains near the South Pole; they resembled those of early Jurassic age known from China, and, together with associated plant fossils, they suggest the presence of mild climates at this time in Antarctica when this part of the continent is believed to have been at a latitude of about 65° S.Tyree, MountColin Monteath—Hedgehog House/Minden Pictures/Getty ImagesColin Monteath—Hedgehog House/Minden Pictures/Getty ImagesTillites—rocks deposited by ancient glaciers—underlie Permian coal beds in numerous places in Antarctica just as they do in the other southern, including now tropical, continents. The widespread occurrence of glacial erratics, containing microfossils of Cretaceous and Cenozoic age, is an indication of the presence of rocks that are younger than the Beacon Sandstone lying underneath ice sheets near the Transantarctic Mountains. The youngest mountain chain in Antarctica is the southward extension of the Andes Mountains of South America that makes up the Antarctic Peninsula, Ellsworth Land, and part of Marie Byrd Land.RELIEFThere are two faces of the present-day continent of Antarctica. One, seen visually, consists of the exposed rock and ice-surface terrain. The other, seen only indirectly by seismic or other remote-sensing techniques, consists of the ice-buried bedrock surface. Both evolved through long and slow geologic processes.Effects of glacial erosion and deposition dominate everywhere in Antarctica, and erosional effects of running water are relatively minor. Yet, on warm summer days, rare and short-lived streams of glacial meltwater do locally exist. The evanescent Onyx River, for example, flows from Lower Wright Glacier terminus to empty into the nondrained basin of Lake Vanda near McMurdo Sound. Glacially sculptured landforms now predominate, as they must have some 300 million years ago, in an earlier period of continental glaciation of all of Gondwana.Vinson MassifGordon Wiltsie/AlpenImage, Ltd.Gordon Wiltsie/AlpenImage, Ltd.Antarctica, with an average elevation of about 7,200 feet (2,200 metres) above sea level, is the world’s highest continent. (Asia, the next, averages about 3,000 feet.) The vast ice sheets of East Antarctica reach heights of 11,500 feet or more in four main centres: Dome A (Argus) at 81° S, 77° E; Dome C at 75° S, 125° E; Dome Fuji at 77° S, 40° E; and Vostok station at 77° S, 104° E. Without its ice, however, Antarctica would probably average little more than about 1,500 feet. It would then consist of a far smaller continent (East Antarctica) and a nearby island archipelago. A vast lowland plain between 90° E and 150° E (today’s Polar and Wilkes subglacial basins) would be fringed by the ranges of the Transantarctic Mountains and of the Gamburtsev Mountains, 6,500 to 13,000 feet high. The rest might be a hilly to mountainous terrain. Relief in general would be great, with elevations ranging from 16,066 feet (4,897 metres) at Vinson Massif in the Sentinel Range, the highest point in Antarctica, to more than 8,200 feet below sea level in an adjoining marine trough to the west (Bentley Subglacial Trench). Areas that are now called “lands,” including most of Ellsworth Land and Marie Byrd Land, would be beneath the sea.Erebus, Mount© Galen Rowell/Corbis© Galen Rowell/CorbisIce-scarred volcanoes, many still active, dot western Ellsworth Land, Marie Byrd Land, and sections of the coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula and Victoria Land, but principal activity is concentrated in the volcanic Scotia Arc. Only one volcano, Gaussberg (90° E), occurs along the entire coast of East Antarctica. Long dormant, Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, showed increased activity from the mid-1970s. Lava lakes have occasionally filled, but not overspilled, its crater, but the volcano’s activity has been closely monitored because Antarctica’s largest station (McMurdo Station, U.S.) lies on its lower flank. One of several violent eruptions of Deception Island, a volcanic caldera, in 1967–70 destroyed nearby British and Chilean stations. Whereas volcanoes of the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc are mineralogically similar to the volcanoes typical of the Pacific Ocean rim, the others in Antarctica are chemically like those of volcanoes along the East African Rift Valley.CLIMATEThe unique weather and climate of Antarctica provide the basis for its familiar appellations—Home of the Blizzard and White Desert. By far the coldest continent, Antarctica has winter temperatures that range from −128.6 °F (−89.2 °C), the world’s lowest recorded temperature, measured at Vostok Station (Russia) on July 21, 1983, on the high inland ice sheet to −76 °F (−60 °C) near sea level. Temperatures vary greatly from place to place, but direct measurements in most places are generally available only for summertime. Only at fixed stations operated since the IGY have year-round measurements been made. Winter temperatures rarely reach as high as 52 °F (11 °C) on the northern Antarctic Peninsula, which, because of its maritime influences, is the warmest part of the continent. Mean temperatures of the coldest months are −4 to −22 °F (−20 to −30 °C) on the coast and −40 to −94 °F (−40 to −70 °C) in the interior, the coldest period on the polar plateau being usually in late August just before the return of the sun. Whereas midsummer temperatures may reach as high as 59 °F (15 °C) on the Antarctic Peninsula, those elsewhere are usually much lower, ranging from a mean of about 32 °F (0 °C) on the coast to between −4 and −31 °F (−20 and −35 °C) in the interior. These temperatures are far lower than those of the Arctic, where monthly means range only from about 32 °F in summer to −31 °F in winter.International concern is increasing over the possibility of global warming (an amplification of Earth’s greenhouse effect). The glaciers and ice sheets of Antarctica may document such change, especially in West Antarctica. Average winter temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 10.8 °F (6 °C) since 1960, and the disintegration of much of the Larsen Ice Shelf between January 1995 and March 2002 was largely attributed to climatic changes resulting from rising average air temperatures.Wind chill—the cooling power of wind on exposed surfaces—is the major debilitating weather factor of Antarctic expeditions. Fierce winds characterize most coastal regions, particularly of East Antarctica, where cold, dense air flows down the steep slopes off interior highlands. Known as katabatic winds, they are a surface flow that may be smooth if of low velocity but that may also become greatly turbulent, sweeping high any loose snow, if a critical velocity is surpassed. This turbulent air may appear suddenly and is responsible for the brief and localized Antarctic “blizzards” during which no snow actually falls and skies above are clear. During one winter at Mirny Station, gusts reached more than 110 miles per hour on seven occasions. At Commonwealth Bay on the Adélie Coast the wind speed averaged 45 miles per hour (20 metres per second). Gusts estimated at between 140 and 155 miles per hour on December 9, 1960, destroyed a Beaver aircraft at Mawson Station on the Mac. Robertson Land coast. Winds on the polar plateau are usually light, with monthly mean velocities at the South Pole ranging from about 9 miles per hour (4 metres per second) in December (summer) to 17 miles per hour (8 metres per second) in June and July (winter).The Antarctic atmosphere, because of its low temperature, contains only about one-tenth of the water-vapour concentration found in temperate latitudes. This atmospheric water largely comes from ice-free regions of the southern oceans and is transported in the troposphere into Antarctica mostly in the 140° sector (80° E to 140° W) from Wilkes Land to Marie Byrd Land. Most of this water precipitates as snow along the continental margin. Rainfalls are almost unknown. Despite the tremendous volume of potential water stored as ice, Antarctica must be considered one of the world’s great deserts; the average precipitation (water equivalent) is only about 2 inches (50 mm) per year over the polar plateau, though considerably more, perhaps 10 times as much, falls in the coastal belt. Lacking a heavy and protective water-vapour-rich atmospheric layer, which in other areas absorbs and reradiates to Earth long-wave radiation, the Antarctic surface readily loses heat energy into space.Many factors determine Antarctica’s climate, but the primary one is the geometry of the Sun-Earth relationship. The 23.5° axial tilt of the Earth to its annual plane of orbit, or ecliptic, around the Sun results in long winter nights and long summer days alternating between both polar regions and causing seasonal variations in climate. On midwinter day, about June 21, the Sun’s rays reach to only 23.5° (not exact, because of refraction) from the South Pole along the latitude of 66.5° S, a line familiarly known as the Antarctic Circle. Although “night” theoretically is six months long at the geographic pole, one month of this actually is a twilight period. Only a few coastal fringes lie north of the Antarctic Circle. The amount of incoming solar radiation, and thus heat, depends additionally on the incident angle of the rays and therefore decreases inversely with latitude to reach a minimum at the geographic poles. These and other factors are essentially the same for both polar regions. The reason for their great climatic difference primarily lies in their reverse distributions of land and sea: the Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean. The Arctic Ocean, a climate-ameliorating heat source, has no counterpart at the South Pole, the great elevation and perpetually reflective snow cover of which instead intensify its polar climate. Moreover, during Antarctic winters, freezing of the surrounding sea effectively more than doubles the size of the continent and removes the oceanic heat source to nearly 1,800 miles from the central polar plateau.Outgoing terrestrial radiation greatly exceeds absorbed incoming solar radiation. This loss results in strong surface cooling, giving rise to the characteristic Antarctic temperature inversions in which temperature increases from the surface upward to about 1,000 feet above the surface. About 90 percent of the loss is replaced by atmospheric heat from lower latitudes, and the remainder by latent heat of water-vapour condensation.Great cyclonic storms circle Antarctica in endless west-to-east procession, exchanging atmospheric heat to the continent from sources in the southern Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Moist maritime air interacting with cold polar air makes the Antarctic Ocean in the vicinity of the Polar Front one of the world’s stormiest. Few storms bring snowfalls to interior regions. With few reporting stations, weather prediction has been exceedingly difficult but is now greatly aided by satellite imagery.A major focus of upper atmospheric research in Antarctica is to understand the processes leading to the annual springtime depletion in stratospheric ozone—the “ozone hole.” Ozone depletion has been steadily increasing since it was first detected in 1977. Ozone is destroyed as the result of chemical reactions on the surfaces of particles in polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs). These clouds are isolated within an atmospheric circulation pattern known as the “polar vortex,” which develops during the long, cold Antarctic winter. The chemical reactions take place with the arrival of sunlight in spring and are facilitated by the presence of halogens (chlorine and fluorine), which are mostly products of human activity. This process of ozone destruction, which also occurs to a lesser extent in the Arctic, increases the amount of ultraviolet-B radiation reaching Earth’s surface, a type of radiation shown to impair photosynthesis in plants, cause an increase in skin cancer in humans, and damage DNA molecules in living things.Antarctica, and particularly the South Pole, attracts much interest in astronomical and astrophysical studies as well as research on the interactions between the Sun and the upper atmosphere of Earth. The South Pole is a unique astronomical location (a station from which the Sun can be viewed continuously in summer) sitting at a high geomagnetic latitude with unequaled atmospheric clarity. It possesses a thick section of pure material (ice) that can be used as a cosmic particle detector. Automatic geophysical observatories on the high polar plateau now record information on the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere, providing data that are critical to an understanding of Earth’s response to solar activity.The Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica (CARA) is a joint project facilitated by the United States and Germany with collaborators in other countries. CARA supports a submillimetre-wave telescope, several other telescopes, and a program to measure the properties of relict radiation left over from the big bang—useful in testing cosmological models.One of the most unique astrophysical observatories on Earth is AMANDA, the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array. This involves an array of hundreds of optical devices set at depths of up to 1.2 miles (2 km) in the ice below the South Pole. It is essentially a telescope built within the ice sheet to detect high-energy neutrinos that pass through the Earth from distant sources.GLACIERS AND SEASGLACIATIONAntarctica provides the best available picture of the probable appearance 20,000 years ago of northern North America under the great Laurentide Ice Sheet. Some scientists contend that the initial glacier that thickened over time to become the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet originated in the Gamburtsev Mountains more than 14 million years ago. Other glaciers, such as those forming in the Sentinel Range perhaps as early as 50 million years ago, advanced down valleys to calve into the sea in West Antarctica. Fringing ice shelves were built and later became grounded as glaciation intensified. Local ice caps developed, covering West Antarctic island groups as well as the mountain ranges of East Antarctica. The ice caps eventually coalesced into great ice sheets that tied together West and East Antarctica into the single continent that is known today. Except for a possible major deglaciation as recently as 3 million years ago, the continent has been largely covered by ice since the first glaciers appeared.pack ice© Armin Rose/Shutterstock.com© Armin Rose/Shutterstock.comCausal factors leading to the birth and development of these continental ice sheets and then to their decay and death are, nevertheless, still poorly understood. The factors are complexly interrelated. Moreover, once developed, ice sheets tend to form independent climatic patterns and thus to be self-perpetuating and eventually perhaps even self-destructing. Cold air masses draining off Antarctic lands, for example, cool and freeze surrounding oceans in winter to form an ice pack, which reduces solar energy input by increasing reflectivity and makes interior continental regions even more remote from sources of open oceanic heat and moisture. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet has grown to such great elevation and extent that little atmospheric moisture now nourishes its central part.Beardmore GlacierCommander Jim Waldron USNR—Antarctic Photo Library/National Science FoundationCommander Jim Waldron USNR—Antarctic Photo Library/National Science FoundationThe volume of South Polar ice must have fluctuated greatly at times since the birth of the ice sheets. Glacial erratics and glacially striated rocks on mountain summits now high above current ice-sheet levels testify to an overriding by ice at much higher levels. General lowering of levels caused some former glaciers flowing from the polar region through the Transantarctic Mountains to recede and nearly vanish, producing such spectacular “dry valleys” as the Wright, Taylor, and Victoria valleys near McMurdo Sound. Doubt has been shed on the common belief that Antarctic ice has continuously persisted since its origin by the discovery reported in 1983 of Cenozoic marine diatoms—believed to date from the Pliocene Epoch (about 5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago)—in glacial till of the Beardmore Glacier area. The diatoms are believed to have been scoured from young sedimentary deposits of basins in East Antarctica and incorporated into deposits of glaciers moving through the Transantarctic Mountains. If so, Antarctica may have been free or nearly free of ice as recently as about 3 million years ago, when the diatom-bearing beds were deposited in a marine seaway; and the Antarctic Ice Sheet may have undergone deglaciations perhaps similar to those that occurred later during interglacial stages in the Northern Hemisphere. Evidence of former higher sea levels found in many areas of the Earth seems to support the hypothesis that such deglaciation occurred. If Antarctica’s ice were to melt today, for example, global sea levels would probably rise about 150 to 200 feet.The Antarctic Ice Sheet seems to be approximately in a state of equilibrium, neither increasing nor decreasing significantly according to the best estimates. Snow precipitation is offset mainly by continental ice moving seaward by three mechanisms—ice-shelf flow, ice-stream flow, and sheet flow. The greatest volume loss is by calving from shelves, particularly the Ross, Ronne, Filchner, and Amery ice shelves. Much loss also occurs by bottom melting, but this is partly compensated by a gain in mass by accretion of frozen seawater. The quantitative pattern and the balance between gain and loss are known to be different at different ice shelves, but melting probably predominates. The smaller ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula are currently retreating, breaking up into vast fields of icebergs, likely due to rising temperature and surface melting.The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) has been the subject of much recent research because it may be unstable. The Ross Ice Shelf is largely fed by huge ice streams descending from the WAIS along the Siple Coast. These ice streams have shown major changes—acceleration, deceleration, thickening, and thinning—in the last century or so. These alterations have affected the grounding line, where grounded glaciers lift off their beds to form ice shelves or floating glacier tongues. Changes to the grounding line may eventually transform the WAIS proper, potentially leading to removal of this ice sheet and causing a major rise in global sea level. Although the possibility of all this happening in the next 100 years is remote, major modifications in the WAIS in the 21st century are not impossible and could have worldwide effects.These ice sheets also provide unique records of past climates from atmospheric, volcanic, and cosmic fallout; precipitation amounts and chemistry; temperatures; and even samples of past atmospheres. Thus ice-core drilling, and the subsequent analysis of these cores, has provided new information on the processes that cause climate to change. A deep coring hole at the Russian station Vostok brought up a climate and fallout history extending back more than 400,000 years. Although near the bottom, drilling has stopped because a huge freshwater lake lies between the ice and the bed at this location. Lake Vostok has probably been isolated from the atmosphere for tens of millions of years, leading to speculation of what sort of life may have evolved in this unusual setting. Research is being conducted on how to answer this question without contaminating the water body. Lake Vostok has also attracted the attention of the planetary science community, because it is a possible test site for future study of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. Ganymede possesses a layer of liquid water beneath a thick ice cover and thus has a potential for harbouring life.Thousands of meteorites have been discovered on “blue ice” areas of the ice sheets. Only five fragments had been found by 1969, but since then more than 9,800 have been recovered, mainly by Japanese and American scientists. Most specimens appear to have landed on Antarctic ice sheets between about 700,000 and 10,000 years ago. They were carried to blue ice areas near mountains where the ancient ice ablated and meteorites became concentrated on the surface. Most meteorites are believed to be from asteroids and a few from comets, but some are now known to be of lunar origin. Other meteorites of a rare class called shergottites had a similar origin from Mars. One of these Martian shergottites has minute structures and a chemical composition that some workers have suggested is evidence for life, though this claim is very controversial.THE SURROUNDING SEASThe seas around Antarctica have often been likened to the moat around a fortress. The turbulent “Roaring Forties” and “Furious Fifties” lie in a circumpolar storm track and a westerly oceanic current zone commonly called the West Wind Drift, or Circumpolar Current. Warm, subtropical surface currents in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans move southward in the western parts of these waters and then turn eastward upon meeting the Circumpolar Current. The warm water meets and partly mixes with cold Antarctic water, called the Antarctic Surface Water, to form a mass with intermediate characteristics called Subantarctic Surface Water. Mixing occurs in a shallow but broad zone of approximately 10° latitude lying south of the Subtropical Convergence (at about 40° S) and north of the Antarctic Convergence (between about 50° and 60° S). The Subtropical Convergence generally defines the northern limits of a water mass having so many unique physical and biological characteristics that it is often given a separate name, the Antarctic, or sometimes the Southern, Ocean; it contains about 10 percent of the global ocean volume.The two convergences are well defined and important oceanic boundary zones that profoundly affect climates, marine life, bottom sedimentation, and ice-pack and iceberg drift. They are easily identified by rapid changes in temperature and salinity. Antarctic waters are less saline than tropical waters because of their lower temperatures and lesser evaporational concentration of dissolved salts. When surface waters move southward from the Subtropical Convergence zone into the subantarctic climatic belt, their temperatures drop by as much as about 9 to 16 °F (5 to 9 °C). Across the Antarctic Convergence, from the subantarctic into the Antarctic climatic zone, surface-water temperature drops further.Whereas the pattern of surface currents, controlled largely by the Earth’s rotation, winds, water-density differences, and the geometry of basins, is relatively well understood, that of deeper water masses is more complex and less well known. North-flowing Antarctic Surface Water sinks to about 3,000 feet beneath warmer Subantarctic Surface Water along the Antarctic Convergence to become the Subantarctic Intermediate Water. This water mass, as well as the cold Antarctic Bottom Water, spreads far north beyond the Equator to exchange with waters of the Northern Hemisphere. The movement of the Antarctic Bottom Water is identifiable in the Atlantic as far north as the Bermuda Rise. Currents near the continent result in a circumferential belt of surface-water divergence accompanied by upwelling of deeper water masses.Ross Ice ShelfMichael Van Woert/National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationMichael Van Woert/National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationTwo forms of floating ice masses build out around the continent: (1) glacier-fed semipermanent ice shelves, some of enormous size, such as the Ross Ice Shelf, and (2) an annually frozen and melted ice pack that in winter reaches to about 56° S in the Atlantic and 64° S in the Pacific. Antarctica has been called the pulsating continent because of the annual buildup and retreat of its secondary ice-fronted coastline. Pushed by winds and currents, the ice pack is in continual motion. This movement is westward in the coastal belt of the East Wind Drift at the continent edge and eastward (farther north) at the belt of the West Wind Drift. Icebergs—calved fragments of glaciers and ice shelves—reach a northern limit at about the Subtropical Convergence. With an annual areal variation about six times as great as that for the Arctic ice pack, the Antarctic pack doubtless plays a far greater role in varying heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere and thus probably in altering global weather patterns. Long-term synoptic studies, now aided by satellite imagery, show long-period thinning in the Antarctic ice-pack regimen possibly related to global climate changes.As part of the Deep Sea Drilling Project conducted from 1968 to 1983 by the U.S. government, the drilling ship Glomar Challenger undertook several cruises of Antarctic and subantarctic waters to gather and study materials on and below the ocean floor. Expeditions included one between Australia and the Ross Sea (1972–73); one in the area south of New Zealand (1973); one from southern Chile to the Bellingshausen Sea (1974); and two in the Drake Passage and Falkland Islands area (1974 and 1979–80). Among the ship’s most significant findings were hydrocarbons discovered in sediments of Paleogene and Neogene age (i.e., some 66 million to 2.6 million years old) in the Ross Sea and rocks carried by icebergs from Antarctica found in late Oligocene sediments (those roughly 28 to 23 million years old) at numerous locations. Researchers inferred from these ice-borne debris that Antarctica was glaciated at least 25 million years ago.Internationally funded drilling operations began in 1985 with the Ocean Drilling Program, using the new drilling vessel JOIDES Resolution to expand earlier Glomar Challenger studies. Studies in the Weddell Sea (1986–87) suggested that surface waters were warm during Late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic time and that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet did not form until about 10 million to 5 million years ago, which is much later than inferred from evidence on the continent itself. Drilling of the Kerguelen Plateau near the Amery Ice Shelf (1987–88) entailed the study of the rifting history of the Indian-Australian Plate from East Antarctica and revealed that this submerged plateau—the world’s largest such feature—is of oceanic origin and not a continental fragment, as had been previously thought.PLANT LIFEAntarctic hairgrassCopyright Robert W. Hernandez/Photo ResearchersCopyright Robert W. Hernandez/Photo ResearchersThe cold desert climate of Antarctica supports only an impoverished community of cold-tolerant land plants that are capable of surviving lengthy winter periods of total or near-total darkness during which photosynthesis cannot take place. Growth must occur in short summer bursts lasting only a few days, a few weeks, or a month or two, depending upon such diverse factors as latitude, seasonal snowpacks, elevation, topographic orientation, wind, and moisture, in both the substrate and the atmosphere. Moisture is the most important single variable and is provided mainly by atmospheric water vapour and by local melt supplies from fallen snow, drift snow, and permafrost. Stream runoff is exceedingly rare. Extreme cold, high winds, and aridity inhibit growth even in summer in most areas. There are, however, certain areas at high latitude and high elevation that have local microclimates formed by differential solar heating of dark surfaces, and these areas are able to support life. The importance of such microclimates was demonstrated by the second Byrd Antarctic Expedition (1933–35), which found that lichens in Marie Byrd Land grow preferentially on darker-coloured heat-absorbing rock.Antarctic plants total about 800 species, of which 350 are lichens. Lichens, although slow-growing, are particularly well adapted to Antarctic survival. They can endure lengthy high-stress periods in dormancy and almost instantly become photosynthetic when conditions improve. Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts), totaling about 100 species, predominate in maritime regions, but mosses can grow nearly everywhere that lichens grow. Liverworts are reported only from coastal and maritime regions. Numerous species of molds, yeasts, and other fungi, as well as freshwater algae and bacteria, complete the listing of Antarctic plants. These forms are extremely widespread and are reported as far as latitude 87° S. In addition, Antarctic seas are highly productive in plankton plant life, particularly in near-shore, nutrient-rich zones of upwelling. Diatoms, a type of algae, are especially abundant.Although soils are essentially not of humic type, they commonly are not sterile either, in that they may contain such microorganisms as bacteria or a variety of blue-green algae. The blue-green algae Nostoc locally contribute minor organic compounds to soils.Today’s barren Antarctic landscape little resembles ancient Paleozoic and Mesozoic ones with their far greater floral displays. Antarctic glaciation, probably beginning 50 million years ago, forced the northward migration of all vascular plants (ferns, conifers, and flowering plants). Only nonwoody forms have again populated subantarctic regions and have scarcely repenetrated the Antarctic zone.Unlike Antarctica, lying south of the Antarctic Convergence, the islands north of the Convergence in the subantarctic botanical zone—including the South Georgia, Crozet, Kerguelen, and Macquarie islands—are characterized by an abundance of vascular plants of many species, at least 50 being identified on South Georgia alone. Whereas plants reproducing by spores are characteristic of Antarctica, seed plants chiefly characterize subantarctic regions.Humans have greatly influenced the natural ecosystem in many Antarctic and subantarctic regions. Alien species of vascular plants near whaling stations have been introduced, and doubtless many alien microorganisms exist near all Antarctic stations. Alien herbivores, chiefly sheep and rabbits, have decimated plant communities on many subantarctic islands. Rabbits have exterminated the native cabbage Pringlea antiscorbutica over wide areas on Kerguelen, and sheep have decimated tussock communities on South Georgia. Increasing numbers of tourists will have an impact on Antarctica’s fragile ecosystem.ANIMAL LIFELAND FAUNAThe native land fauna is wholly invertebrate. Apparently climatically less tolerant and less easily dispersed, the fauna follows plant colonization of newly deglaciated regions and therefore is not as widely distributed. The Antarctic microfauna includes heliozoans, rotifers, tardigrades, nematodes, and ciliate protozoans. The protozoans dominate soil and freshwater communities. The terrestrial macrofauna consists entirely of arthropods, many species being parasitic on birds and seals. The principal arthropod groups represented include Acarina (mites), Mallophaga (biting lice), Collembola (springtails), Anoplura (sucking lice), Diptera (midges), and Siphonaptera (fleas). Two species of beetles, probably alien, are known from islands near the Antarctic Peninsula. The dominant free-living forms, mites and springtails, live under stones and are associated with spore-reproducing plants.BIRDSemperor penguinMichael C.T. Smith—The National Audubon Society Collection/Photo ResearchersMichael C.T. Smith—The National Audubon Society Collection/Photo Researchersgentoo penguin© lfstewart/Fotolia© lfstewart/Fotoliapenguin: Adélie penguins and leopard sealsStockbyte/ThinkstockStockbyte/ThinkstockAbout 45 species of birds live south of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three—the emperor penguin, Antarctic petrel, and South Polar (McCormick’s) skua—breed exclusively on the continent or on nearby islands. An absence of mammalian land predators and the rich offshore food supply make Antarctic coasts a haven for immense seabird rookeries. Penguins, of the order Sphenisciformes, symbolize this polar region, though they live on seacoasts throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Of the 18 living species (of which two may be only subspecies), only the Adélie and emperor live along the Antarctic coastline. The habitats of five other polar species—king, chinstrap, gentoo, rockhopper, and macaroni—extend only as far south as the northern Antarctic Peninsula and subantarctic islands. The evolution of these flightless birds has been traced to the Eocene Epoch, about 40 million years ago, using fossils found on Seymour Island, off the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and at a few other places. The largest modern penguin, the emperor, standing between three and four feet in height, would be dwarfed by some of its extinct New Zealand and Seymour Island relatives, the fossil bones of which indicate that they reached heights up to five feet seven inches. Some authorities believe that penguins may have a shared ancestry with other birds of Antarctica, capable of flight, from the order Procellariiformes. Birds of that order, mainly species of petrels but also a few of albatrosses, make up more than half of the Antarctic and subantarctic breeding species. Other birds of the region include species of cormorants, pintails, gulls, terns, sheathbills, and pipits.Banding and recovery studies show that some Antarctic birds travel throughout the world. Rare sightings of skuas and petrels far in the continental interior, even near the South Pole, suggest that these powerful birds may occasionally cross the continent. Experiments show that Antarctic birds, including the flightless penguin, have strong homing instincts and excellent navigational capability; they apparently have a highly developed sun-azimuth orientation system and biological clock mechanism that functions even with the sun remaining continuously high. Adélie penguins released as far as 1,900 miles from their nests, for example, are known to have returned within a year.Feeding habits vary widely from species to species. Most depend on the abundantly provisioned larder of the sea. The seabirds feed mainly on crustacea, fish, and squid, mostly at the surface or, in the case of cormorants and penguins, at depths of up to about 150 feet. Shorebirds forage for mollusks, echinoderms, and littoral crustacea. Sheathbills, the southern black-backed gull, giant petrels, and skuas feed occasionally, as allowed, on other birds’ unguarded eggs. The voracious skua and giant petrel are even known to attack the young or weak of other species, particularly penguins.Dependent upon seafood, most birds leave the continent each autumn and follow Antarctica’s “secondary” coastline as the ice pack builds northward. The emperor penguins, however, are the exception and remain behind as solitary guardians (other than humans) of the continent through the long winter night. The emperors, once thought rare, are now estimated to number more than one million in about 25 known colonies.SEA LIFESouthern Ocean: new species3:13Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzContunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzThe prolific zooplankton of Antarctic waters feed on the copious phytoplankton and, in turn, form the basic diet of whales, seals, fish, squid, and seabirds. The Antarctic waters, because of their upwelled nutrients, are more than seven times as productive as subantarctic waters. The most important organism in the higher food chain is the small, shrimplike krill, Euphausia superba, only an inch or two in length when mature. But for their habit of congregating in vast, dense schools, they would have little food value for the large whales and seals. Their densities are great, however, and a whale, with built-in nets of baleen and hairlike fibres, can strain out meals of a ton or more in a few minutes. During the three to four months spent in Antarctic waters, the original population of baleen whales alone could consume an estimated 150 million tons of krill. Animals on the sea bottom of the nearshore zone include the sessile hydrozoans, corals, sponges, and bryozoans, as well as the foraging, crablike pycnogonids and isopods, the annelid worm polychaeta, echinoids, starfish, and a variety of crustaceans and mollusks. Winter and anchor ice, however, keep the sublittoral zone relatively barren to about 50 feet in depth.Of the nearly 20,000 kinds of modern fish, no more than about 100 are known from seas south of the Antarctic Convergence. Nearly three-fourths of the 90 or so sea-bottom species belong to the superfamily Notothenioidea, the Antarctic perches. At sea bottom there are also the Zoarcidae, or eel-pouts; the Liparidae, or sea snails; the Macrouridae, or rat-tailed fishes; and the Gadidae, or codlike fishes. Rare nonbony types in the Antarctic zone include hagfish and skates. Many species of deep-sea fish are known south of the Antarctic Convergence, but only three, a barracuda and two lantern fishes, seem to be confined to this zone. Antarctic fishes are well adapted to the cold waters; the bottom fish are highly endemic, 90 percent of the species being found nowhere else. This supports other biological and geologic evidence that Antarctica has been isolated for a very long time.Antarctic native mammals are all marine and include seals (pinnipeds), porpoises, dolphins, and whales (cetaceans). Only one otariid, or fur seal, breeds south of the Antarctic Convergence; four species of phocids, or true seals—the gregarious Weddell seal, the ubiquitous crabeater seal, the solitary and aggressively carnivorous leopard seal, and the rarely seen Ross seal—breed almost exclusively in the Antarctic zone, and another, the southern elephant seal, breeds near the Convergence at South Georgia, Kerguelen, and Macquarie islands. The sea lion, an otariid, is plentiful in the Falkland Islands but probably never ventures into the cold Antarctic waters. The fur seal and the elephant seal are now regenerating after near extinction. Weddell seals are thought to number about 500,000, the crabeater about 5,000,000 to 6,000,000, and the Ross seals about 50,000. Weddell seals are unique in being able to survive under fast ice, even in winter, by maintaining open breathing holes with their teeth. The leopard seal, armed with powerful jaws and huge canines, is one of the few predators of adult penguins. A number of mummified seal carcasses, chiefly crabeaters, have been found at distances of nearly 30 miles from the sea and elevations up to about 3,000 feet in the McMurdo dry valleys. Finding no food in such inland wanderings, the crabeaters eventually died, and their leathery carcasses were preserved by the coldness and aridity of the climate.Whales and their cetacean relatives, porpoises and dolphins, range widely from Arctic to Antarctic waters and are found in all oceans and seas. A number of species range to, but generally not across, the Antarctic Convergence and so are considered only peripheral Antarctic types. Among the fish- and squid-eating toothed whales, or odontocetes, are a few peripheral Antarctic porpoises and dolphins and the pilot whale. More typical of Antarctic waters are the killer whale, sperm whale, and rare bottle-nosed, or beaked, whale. Seven species of baleen, or whalebone, whales also inhabit Antarctic waters, subsisting on the plentiful krill; these include the southern right whale, the humpback whale, and four kinds of rorqual—the blue whale, fin whale, sei whale, and lesser rorqual, or minke. The pygmy right whale is endemic to Antarctic and subantarctic waters. The killer whale, one of the most intelligent of marine animals, hunts in packs and feeds on larger animals, such as fish, penguins and other aquatic birds, seals, dolphins, and other whales. Despite its name, there have been no authenticated accounts of attacks on humans near Antarctica. Excessive slaughter in the past has drastically decimated stocks of the larger whales, particularly the giant blue whales. Near extinction, the blue whales have been protected by international agreement.Alien mammals that now reside semipermanently in Antarctic and subantarctic regions include sheep, rabbits, dogs, cats, rats, mice, and human beings. Effects on local ecosystems are great, from pollution of station areas by human wastes to erosion from overgrazing by sheep and to decimation of bird populations by dogs and cats and of whale and fur-seal stocks by humans. Even so, Antarctica remains by far the least contaminated land on Earth. Under the Antarctic Treaty, it is designated as a special conservation area, and many former human activities have been prohibited in an attempt to preserve the natural ecological system of the unique environment.Economic resourcesEXPLORATION FOR RESOURCESAntarctica, it has been suggested, may have become a continent for science because it was useful for nothing else. Certainly, the great success of the Antarctic Treaty and of the political experiment in international cooperation is in no small way attributable to the fact that exploitable mineral resources have not been found. Articles of the original treaty (signed in 1959; entered into force in 1961) did not exclude economic activities, but neither did they set up jurisdictional procedures in the event that any were undertaken (see below History).Increasing economic pressures have forced mineral and petroleum exploration into more and more remote regions as resources have gradually become depleted in other, more accessible lands. It is likely that market and technological conditions will make it economically feasible to carry the search to Antarctica and its continental shelves. The political volatility of the resource question, especially the problems of rights of ownership and development, has prompted proposals that range from sharing any found mineral wealth equally among nations to establishing the continent as a world park.Most early Antarctic expeditions through the 19th century were directly or indirectly of economic incentive. For some, it was the search for new trading routes; for others, it meant the opening of new fur-sealing grounds; still others saw a possibility of mineral riches. The exploitation of natural resources has centred in the subantarctic and Antarctic seas, and virtually none has yet occurred on the continent. In one analysis of resource potentials, “Antarctic natural resources” were defined as “any natural materials or characteristics (in the Antarctic region) of significance to man.” By this broad definition, the term includes not only biological and mineral resources but also the land itself, water, ice, climate, and space for living and working, recreation, and storage. “Economic” resources are those that can be used or exported at a cost that is less than their value. Any attempted appraisal must therefore be continually reevaluated in terms of current market values, logistical costs, and technological developments. Few known Antarctic resources have any economic importance in terms of present-day estimates of these factors. The factors are complexly interrelated and difficult to assess for the present, let alone the future. For example, technological advances that could allow development in Antarctica might instead allow development of what are considered marginally economic resources in other regions. Moreover, by the time it might become feasible to develop an Antarctic resource, such as petroleum, other suppliers for the market might be found, such as, in this case, fusion reactors or solar or geothermal energy, which would greatly change cost factors.MINERAL RESOURCESThe geology of Antarctica is known sufficiently well to allow rather certain prediction of the existence of a variety of mineral deposits, some probably large. The fact that none of significant size, besides coal in the Transantarctic Mountains and iron near the Prince Charles Mountains of East Antarctica, is known to exist is largely the result of inadequate sampling. With the amount of ice-free terrain in Antarctica estimated at somewhere between 1 and 5 percent, the probability is practically nonexistent that a potential ore body would be exposed. Moreover, whereas generations of prospectors have combed temperate and even Arctic mountains, Antarctic mountains have been visited mostly by reconnaissance parties on scientific missions since the IGY.The high degree of certainty that mineral deposits do exist is based on the close geologic similarities that have been observed between areas of Antarctica and of mineral-rich provinces of South America, South Africa, and Australia and on the consensus that has been reached on the configuration of the Gondwanaland landmass during Mesozoic times. The gold-producing Witwatersrand beds of South Africa may correspond to the terranes of western Queen Maud Land. The young mountain belt of the copper-rich South American Andes continues southward, looping through the Scotia Arc into the Antarctic Peninsula and probably beyond into Ellsworth Land. The mostly ice-covered areas of Wilkes Land may parallel the gold-producing greenstone belts and platinum-bearing intrusions of southwestern Australia. The Dufek intrusion, an immense layered gabbroic complex in the northern Pensacola Mountains, is geologically similar to, though much younger than, the Bushveld complex of South Africa, which is a leading producer of platinum-group metals, chromium, and other resources. Mineral occurrences have been found in some of these Antarctic areas, including antimony, chromium, copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, tin, uranium, and zinc. None approaches a grade or size warranting economic interest. Also noneconomic are the very large deposits of coal and sedimentary iron. Because of the high costs of polar operations, few conceivable resources—excepting those with high unit value such as platinum, gold, and perhaps diamonds—have any likelihood for exploitation.Offshore resources of petroleum, however, are a different matter. The finding of gaseous hydrocarbons in cores drilled in the Ross Sea by the Glomar Challenger in 1973 aroused considerable international interest. Cruises of the U.S. research vessel Eltanin had by then made a number of reconnaissance geophysical studies investigating the nature of the Antarctic continental margin. Since the late 1970s oceanographic research ships of many nations, including those of France, Germany (West Germany until 1990), Japan, and the United States, have undertaken detailed studies of the structure of the continental margin, using the sophisticated geophysical techniques of seismic reflection and gravity and magnetic surveys. Thicknesses of sedimentary rock needed for sizable petroleum accumulations may occur in continental-margin areas of the Ross, Amundsen, Bellingshausen, and Weddell seas and perhaps near the Amery Ice Shelf; and some may also exist in inland basins covered by continental ice, particularly in West Antarctica. It seems unlikely, however, that fields of a size needed for exploitation are present. If they should be found, any petroleum extraction would be difficult but not impossible in the offshore areas, as technologies have been developed for drilling for and recovering petroleum in Arctic regions. Drill ships and platforms would be more severely affected by iceberg drift and moving ice packs than in the Arctic. Icebergs are commonly far larger than those in the Arctic and have deeper keels; they scour the seafloor at deeper levels and would be more likely to damage seafloor installations such as wellheads, pipelines, and mooring systems. These problems, though great, are far fewer than those that would be encountered in developing inland mineral resources of any kind. Thus, although petroleum is generally considered to be the most likely prospect for exploitation in Antarctica, there is little potential for its development before reserves are consumed from more accessible areas throughout the world. Even if accidentally found through scientific studies, mineral resources cannot now be commercially explored or exploited under a 1991 agreement by the United States and other Antarctic Treaty nations (see below History).BIOLOGICAL RESOURCESResources of the sea first attracted people to Antarctica and provided the only basis for commercial activity in this region for many years. Commercial fur sealing began about 1766 in the Falkland Islands and rapidly spread to all subantarctic islands in the zeal to supply the wealthy markets of Europe and China. Immense profits were made, but the toll was equally immense. Early accounts relate that millions of skins were taken from the Falklands during the mid-1780s. Within a century, however, the herds of fur seals had disappeared. Elephant seals were then hunted for their oil, and, as their numbers dwindled, the sealers turned to whaling. During the 20th century herds of some whale species (notably blue, fin, and sei) were largely driven from Antarctic waters, but commercial whaling was not effectively curtailed until catch quotas were imposed in the 1970s and 1980s. Populations of many species of seals and whales have been regenerating. In 1994 the 40-nation International Whaling Commission permanently banned whaling in all waters south of Australia, Africa, and South America, a ruling that assures population increases and creates an immense sanctuary covering nearly one-fourth of the world’s oceans.Commercial fishing, although little developed before 1970, has been rising in significance since then, especially with the increased use of factory ships, which can catch and process large quantities of fish. Catches of one species of Antarctic cod (Notothenia rossii) have been as high as 400,000 tons, prompting concerns about overfishing in Antarctic waters. Fishing for Antarctic krill, which live in almost unfathomable abundance in the nutrient-rich polar waters, has shown only minor commercial activity. In October 2016 the creation of a marine protected area in the Ross Sea eliminated commercial fishing from a zone covering some 600,000 square miles (1,600,000 square km) of ocean, beginning in December 2017.OTHER RESOURCESA rich imagination can see many possible uses of Antarctica and its materials. The continental ice sheet contains nearly 90 percent of the world’s glacial ice—a huge potential supply of fresh water—but any economic value is precluded by delivery costs. Antarctica has been proposed as a long-term deep-freeze storage site for grain and other foods, but calculations show that such usage cannot be economic, because of excessive shipping, handling, and investment costs. The Antarctic Treaty prevents the continent from being used as a site for radioactive-waste disposal and storage. Antarctica and its nearby islands could play an important role in wartime, particularly in the Scotia Sea region and Drake Passage, for control of interocean shipping. In 1940–41, for example, German commerce raiders made considerable use of Kerguelen Island for this purpose. The Antarctic Treaty rules out military use, however, and the increasing capability of long-range aircraft, rocketry, and satellite surveillance and reentry decreases the possible military importance of Antarctica.gentoo penguin: tourists observing a group of gentoo penguinsRyan T. Pierse/Getty ImagesRyan T. Pierse/Getty ImagesAntarctica contains abundant scenic resources, and these have been increasingly exploited since the late 1950s. The tourist industry began in a modest way in January and February 1958, with tours to the Antarctic Peninsula area arranged by the Argentine Naval Transport Command. Since January 1966, yearly tourist ships have plied Antarctic coastal waters, stopping here and there for visits at scientific stations and at penguin rookeries. The number of visits by cruise ships has increased, and in the mid-1970s sightseeing flights by commercial airliners were inaugurated. Tourist overflights lost popularity, however, after the November 1979 crash of a New Zealand airliner into Mount Erebus (Ross Island), with the loss of all 257 passengers and crew. The 1990–91 summer season alone saw more than 4,800 tourist visitors. Some 40,000 tourists had visited Antarctica by the mid-1990s, principally by tour boats to the northern Antarctic Peninsula. A handful of more adventurous tourists have ventured into or across the continental interior by ski, dog team, or private aircraft.photographing penguins at Neko Harbor, Antarctica0:18Joe Capra—ScientifantasticJoe Capra—ScientifantasticPolar visionaries once imagined an all-weather landing strip for wheeled jet aircraft at Marble Point near McMurdo Sound; one or more hotels nearby, perhaps in one of the McMurdo dry valleys and served by helicopter from the jet runway; and possibly even a centre for skiing and mountaineering. With such facilities, they believed, greatly increased numbers of tourists could be brought to the continent. New technologies for landing large wheeled aircraft on inland ice sheets have opened possibilities for tourist facilities in many parts of Antarctica. Permanent accommodations for tourists ashore seem inevitable, especially in the Antarctic Peninsula. The flourishing tourist industry, however, has few controls under present Antarctic Treaty regulations. Parties to the treaty are studying effects of tourism in order to provide regulations for ensuring protection of Antarctica’s highly sensitive ecosystem. Safeguarding penguin rookeries that particularly attract tourist photographers is of special concern. Problems created by the increasing tourism include sewage and waste disposal, the need for search and rescue facilities (a few tourist ships have gone aground or have been trapped in ice, requiring help), and a system for handling the civil and criminal cases that will inevitably arise.HistoryA great many nations, large and small, played important roles in the discovery and exploration of Antarctica. Who first saw the continent is controversial. The Russian expedition leader Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, the Englishman Edward Bransfield, and the American Nathaniel Palmer all claim first sightings in 1820: Bellingshausen sighted a shelf edge of continental ice on January 20; two days later Bransfield caught sight of land that the British later considered to be a mainland part of the Antarctic Peninsula; and on November 18 Palmer unequivocally saw the mainland-peninsula side of Orleans Strait.About 650 ce, however, long before European geographers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance were to conjecture about the mythical Terra Australis, Maori legend tells of a New Zealand Polynesian war canoe, under the command of one Ui-te-Rangiora, that sailed at least as far south as the frozen ocean. The legendary vast size of the continent shrank to nearly its present one when in 1772–75 the Englishman James Cook circumnavigated the globe in high southern latitude, proving that Terra Australis, if it existed at all, lay somewhere beyond the ice packs that he discovered between about 60° and 70° S.Early scientific progressThe period from the 1760s to about 1900 was one dominated by exploitation of Antarctic and subantarctic seas, particularly along Scotia Ridge. Sealing vessels of many nations, principally American and British but including Argentine, Australian, South African, New Zealand, German, and Norwegian, participated in hunting that eventually led to near extinction of the southern fur seal. Many also hunted whales, and the less profitable whaling industry climaxed following World War I after the decline of sealing. Among the few geographic and scientific expeditions that stand out during this period are those of Bellingshausen, commanding the Russian ships Vostok and Mirny, in the first close-in circumnavigation of Antarctica in 1819–21; Bransfield, on a British expedition charting part of the Antarctic Peninsula in 1819–20; Dumont d’Urville, on a French expedition in 1837–40, when Adélie Land was discovered and claimed for France; Charles Wilkes, on a U.S. naval expedition in 1838–42 that explored a large section of the East Antarctic coast; and James Clark Ross, on a British expedition in 1839–43 that discovered the Ross Sea and Ross Ice Barrier (now called Ross Ice Shelf) as well as the coast of Victoria Land.The “heroic era” of explorationDuring the first two decades of the 20th century, commonly called the “heroic era” of Antarctic exploration, great advances were made in not only geographic but also scientific knowledge of the continent. The Englishmen Robert F. Scott and Ernest Henry Shackleton led three expeditions between 1901 and 1913, pioneering routes into the interior and making important geologic, glaciological, and meteorologic discoveries that provided a firm foundation for present-day scientific programs. This era was preceded by two events that proved the feasibility of Antarctic overwintering: (1) the Belgian ship Belgica, under command of Adrien de Gerlache, became the first vessel to winter in Antarctic waters when, from March 1898 to March 1899, it was trapped and drifted in pack ice of the Bellingshausen Sea, and (2) a scientific party under Carsten E. Borchgrevink spent the next winter camped at Cape Adare, for the first planned overwintering on the continent.Sledge probes deep into the interior were made by Scott on the British National Antarctic Discovery Expedition (1901–04) and by Shackleton on the British Antarctic Nimrod Expedition (1907–09) from base camps on Ross Island. New southing records were set by Scott, in company with Shackleton and E.A. Wilson, who reached 82°17′ S on Ross Ice Shelf on December 30, 1902, and by Shackleton in a party of five, which reached 88°23′ S, a point about 97 nautical miles from the pole, on January 9, 1909. The aerial age in Antarctica was presaged by Scott in 1902, who went aloft in a captive balloon for aerial reconnaissance, and the mechanical age by Shackleton in 1908, who used an automobile at Cape Royds, Ross Island. The experimental use of hardy Manchurian ponies and the pioneering of a route up the great Beardmore Glacier to the polar plateau by Shackleton paved the way for the epic sledging trip of Scott in 1911–12 to the South Pole.Discovery of the Antarctic poles

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Mississippi backwards

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panggeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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Continental drift, large-scale horizontal movements of continents relative to one another and to the ocean basins during one or more episodes of geologic time

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Continental drift, large-scale horizontal movements of continents relative to one another and to the ocean basins during one or more episodes of geologic time

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The configuration of Earth’s continents  has changed dramatically over hundreds of millions of years and is still changing todayhttp://quest.eb.com/search/continental-drift/1/132_1449112/Cretaceous-Europe-Earth-globe

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Continents are drifting mountains are uplifting thanks to sea floor spreading happening at them ocean ridges.

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Continents are drifting mountains are uplifting thanks to sea floor spreading happening at them ocean ridges.

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Ethan

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MY CAPS LOCK INS STILL BROKEN
HEEELLLp OH WAIT THERE WAIT NOO oh yay anyway Pangea began forming about 300 million years ago anD WAIT NOOO ITS BACK oh wait its back HIP HIP HOOR....OH

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about 150 million years ago, Pangea had separated into northern (Laurasia) and southern (Gondwana) landmasses. Laurasia comprised what later became North America and Eurasia (Europe and Asia), except for India. Gondwana consisted of all of the other land. Antarctica, India, and Australia began to shift away from Gondwana in the middle of the Jurassic period. By the late Cretaceous period, about 94 million years ago, Gondwana had separated into South America and Africa, but Australia and Antarctica remained connected to each other. India was joined to Madagascar. North America and Eurasia, which had begun drifting apart during the Jurassic, were still joined at the site of the present Bering Strait.

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There is a rap for continental drift and alfred wegener

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There is a rap for continental drift and alfred wegener