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The frozen continent of Antarctica was the last continent humanity set foot on. The first documented landings made below the Antarctic Circle took place in 1820, when Admiral Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and the crew of the Vostok and Mirny, as part of the Russian Antarctic Expedition, made land at Peter I Island and Alexander Island.
Soils in Antarctica are nearly two-dimensional habitats, with most biological activity limited to the top four or five inches by the permanently frozen ground below. [4] Environments can be limiting due to soil properties such as unfavorable mineralogy, texture, structure, salts, pH, or moisture relationships. [5]
There are three vast canyons that run for hundreds of kilometers, cutting through tall mountains. None of the canyons are visible at the snow-covered surface of the continent since they are buried under hundreds of meters of ice. The largest of the canyons is called Foundation Trough and is over 350 km long and 35 km wide.
A speculative representation of Antarctica labelled as ' Terra Australis Incognita ' on Jan Janssonius's Zeekaart van het Zuidpoolgebied (1657), Het Scheepvaartmuseum The name given to the continent originates from the word antarctic, which comes from Middle French antartique or antarctique (' opposite to the Arctic ') and, in turn, the Latin antarcticus (' opposite to the north ').
The continent of Antarctica is so cold that it has supported only 2 vascular plants for millions of years, and its flora presently consists of around 250 lichens, 100 mosses, 25–30 liverworts, and around 700 terrestrial and aquatic algal species, which live on the areas of exposed rock and soil around the shore of the continent.
A five-month-long slumber party. A college dorm. An introvert’s hell. Those are just some of the words residents of Antarctica use to describe life in the world’s coldest, most mysterious ...
A map of the Antarctic region, including the Antarctic Convergence and the 60th parallel south The Antarctic Plate. The Antarctic (/ æ n ˈ t ɑːr t ɪ k,-k t ɪ k /, US also / æ n t ˈ ɑːr t ɪ k,-k t ɪ k /; commonly / æ ˈ n ɑːr t ɪ k /) [Note 1] is a polar region around Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole.
Two temperature records were set on February 6, one in each hemisphere, one for warmth, the other for mind-numbing cold. On Feb. 6, 2020, five years ago, Antarctica set its all-time record high of ...