fun facts
1Most of Antarctica is covered in ice over 1.6 kilometres thick (1 mile 2Antarctica is bigger than Europe and almost double the size of Australia 3At its thickest point the ice sheet is 4,776 meters deep and averages 2, 160 meters thick. This is 90 percent of all the world's ice and it is 70 percent of all the world's fresh water 4Fifty million years ago Antarctica had a temperate climate, evergreen forests and many more kinds of animals than it has today. As the icecap slowly formed, most of the animals that lived there in ancient times were obliterated. Evidence of this once warm climate is in the fossils of plants, including fossil ferns, found by scientists 5There are many different species of penguins in Antarctica, including the huge and colorful emperor penguin, the smaller Adelie, the gentoo, the chinstrap penguin, the rockhopper, the king, the macaroni and more. In all there are 21 species of penguin scattered throughout the southern hemisphere. Penguins are great swimmers. They can swim so fast, if they're trying, for instance, to escape the jaws of a leopard seal, that they can shoot out of the water 7 feet into the air onto a safe ice floe. |
Skill Onefact
An ice sheet covers all but 2.4 percent of Antarctica's 14 million square kilometers |
Skill Twofacts
Penguins are the group of Antarctic birds that everyone thinks of first, but there are actually more petrels than there are penguins! Petrels include albatrosses, fulmars, prions, shearwaters, storm petrels, diving petrels and Gadfly petrels. Petrels are found in all the world's oceans, but there are more in Antarctic waters than anywhere else |
fact
.
|