Emilio Palma

Emilio Palma
Born	Emilio Marcos Palma January 7, 1978 (1978-01-07) Esperanza Base, Trinity Peninsula, Antarctica
Nationality	Argentine
Known for	First human born in Antarctica
Parents	Jorge Emilio Palma (father) Silvia Morella de Palma (mother)

Emilio Marcos Palma (born January 7, 1978) is an Argentine national who is the first person known to be born on the continent of Antarctica. Emilio weighed 7 pounds and 8 ounces (3.4 kg) when born in Fortín Sargento Cabral at the Esperanza Base near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. His father, Captain Jorge Emilio Palma, was head of the Argentine army detachment at the base. While ten other people have since been born on Antarctica, Palma's birthplace remains the most southerly of anyone in history.

In late 1977, then seven months pregnant Silvia Morella de Palma the mother of Emilio was airlifted to Esperanza Base in order to complete her pregnancy in the base. The airlift was a part of the Argentine solutions to the sovereignty disputes over Argentine Antarctica. He was automatically granted Argentine citizenship by the government since his parents were both Argentine citizens, and he was born in the claimed Argentine Antarctica.

He could have also claimed the British nationality as the location of the base falls within the claimed British Antarctic Territory and he was born before 1983 when British nationality law was changed to grant the British nationality only when a child is born in the United Kingdom to a parent who is a British citizen or 'settled' in the UK.

He is featured in the Guinness Book of Records as the first person in history known to be born on the continent. However, Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen of Norway, born in the island territory of South Georgia in 1913, is sometimes claimed as the actual first Antarctica birth as that territory being considered part of Antarctica for some purposes.^{[citation needed]}