Antarctica: Isolated Continent

Fri 10 February

Lady Mitchell Hall

Continents as we know them today emerged as a consequence of the mechanism of plate tectonics, which led to the fragmentation of a super-continent. One such fragment, the Antarctica, now is in the ocean at the South Pole, covered in thick ice-sheets that contrast with its long-past history where it was adorned by forests and inhabited by animals including dinosaurs. It was the natural processes that buried carbon dioxide that led to the glaciation of Antarctica. The burning of fossil fuels is now having an opposite effect, causing the depletion of the ice at a remarkable rate. For humans, Antarctica can be thought of as an isolated continent because no one actually makes a home there. But the continent is not entirely isolated—there is life, including a few thousand scientists and their support staff. And the oceans around are teeming with life with a few species of birds breeding on the continent.

Cost: Free