![]() In recent years, humans have also come to appreciate how forests, parkland, wetlands, and even farms play an important role in storing carbon and slowing climate change. At the same time, local parks in cities like Boston, New York, and Philadelphia welcome thousands of residents each day for outdoor rest and recreation. So how and why did Antarctica go into the deep freeze? From the discussion above, you will know that the continent’s gradual movement towards the South Pole had something to do with it.CAIT BOURGAULTMuch more than a year-round playground for outdoor enthusiasts, Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness-where AMC has protected more than 75,000 acres of forest-is a model for land conservation and carbon storage.Įach year, Acadia National Park welcomes more than 2 million visitors to the scenic coast of Maine. The Antarctic Plate includes continental crust making up Antarctica and its continental shelf, along with oceanic crust beneath the seas surrounding Antarctica.Ĭheck out the artists impression below of what Antarctica would have looked like millions of years ago… it looks quite different from Antarctica today! Today the continent of Antarctica is part of the larger Antarctic Plate which is one of the Earth’s seven major tectonic plates. After this time, Gondwana slowly split apart to create Antarctica as a separate continent, and Antarctica has gradually moved away from the other southern continents towards its present polar position. Some 200 million years ago, Antarctic continental crust was joined with South American, African, Indian, and Australian continental crust making up a large southern land mass known as Gondwana (the southern part of the supercontinent called Pangea). For example, about 450 million years ago the crust that makes up England was in the Southern Hemisphere while crust making up Antarctica straddled the equator! ![]() Indeed in the distant geological past, the pattern and configuration of tectonic plates has been very different from today. As with other continents, sea floor spreading in some places and subduction in others has caused Antarctica’s position to change over geological time and hence Antarctica hasn’t always been located over the South Pole. Not only did this prove that the continent must have been much warmer in the past to support such vegetation, but the similarity with Glossopteris fossils found in South America, South Africa, and Australia gave strong support to the emerging idea, championed by Alfred Wegener, that the continents were once joined and have since moved apart – the theory of ‘continental drift’.ĭuring the 1960s, the mechanisms behind continental drift finally became understood and our modern theory of plate tectonics was born. When this collection was retrieved and analysed, it was found to contain fossils of an ancient ‘seed-fern’ tree ( Glossopteris). Teachers’ notes | Politics of Antarcticaīefore Captain Scott and his team perished during their return journey from the South Pole in 1912, they had collected a number of important fossils from near the Beardmore Glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains.Teachers’ notes | Destination Antarctica.Teachers’ notes | Geographical Information Systems.Teachers’ notes | Understanding Antarctica.Teachers’ notes | Terrestrial and marine ecosystems.Teachers’ notes | Atmosphere, weather and climate.Ice shelf retreat on the Antarctic Peninsula.Working in 3D using digital elevation models.Mapping wind speed and direction in Antarctica.Your polar proposal – become a scientist.Introduction to Antarctica’s Ice Sheets.Which view of the future? You decide! |. ![]() Ice shelf retreat on the Antarctic Peninsula |.Working in 3D using digital elevation models |. ![]() Mapping wind speed and direction in Antarctica |.Understanding the past and the present |.Using the past to research the present |.Your polar proposal – become a scientist |.Regional climate variation and weather |.Key factors behind Antarctica’s climate |.Tectonic history: into the deep freeze |.So you think you know about glaciers? |.Introduction to Antarctica’s Ice Sheets |. ![]()
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