Antartica

The Antarctic is to the south of the 60º and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans bath the coast. It is 1.100 km away from South America, 3.600 km from Africa and 2.200 km from New Zealand.

These distances explain the absence of superior fauna. The fauna of the Antarctic vertebrates (birds and pinnipeds) although they use the earth in a certain moment in their life, from the ecological point of view, they belong to the marine ecosystem.

Man's history on the Antarctic is very recent.

The Antarctic is around 14.000.000 km2; this number increases if the islands are included The seas of Ross and Weddel, divide the Antarctic in two lobes of different sizes, called Oriental Antarctic and Western Antarctic, which is the one that projects the Antarctic Peninsula.

The principal feature of this Continent is its big interior plateau, the Polar Plateau, its height in the South Pole reaches 3.000 meters, 2.700 meters are ice.

Only those mountains which are higher than the ice layer are seen and they are called nunataks.

Because of gravity, the layer of ice flows towards the coast and falls then into the sea. When they reach the sea, these formations float and then they come off forming the floes that are taken towards the north by the marine currents where they end up being destroyed by waves and high temperatures.

The highest elevation is a mountain of the Vinson Massif (5.140m) in the Earth of Ellswoth. An active volcano exists, the Erebus, in the Island of Ross, in the Ross Sea. In the Argentine Sector, the Island Decepción is a crater of a volcano; here the first international volcano observatory was installed in 1993. On the Antarctic continent the Geographical South Pole, the Magnetic South Pole and the Cold Pole with -89,3º are found.