Talk:Antarctica

Species of Lichen

According to the article, "There are more than 200 species of lichens" in Antarctica. But lichens are composed of two species, on plant and one fungus. SO I'm not sure what is meant here. Please advise. 98.185.236.199 (talk) 05:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a fungus and often a plant such as green algae. There are over 200 of these types of composite organisms living in Antarctica. AerobicFox (talk) 06:07, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Antarctic Micronational Union edit request

http://www.columbusmagazine.nl/special/2685/10_the_grand_duchy_of_westarctica_west-antarctica.html

According to this article there is a micronational union of Antarctic nations. I think it could be worth putting a note about them in the politics section or under claims

their microwikipedia page is http://www.microwiki.org.uk/index.php?title=AMU

Vitcash (talk) 19:42, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Micronations are not relevant or important enough to include in this article, even in the politics or territorial claims article. They hold absolutely no relevance in the real world running of most areas, an issue that is probably particularly appropriate to antarctica. Perhaps on the List of micronations page (which currently only has one) a mention could be made. Chipmunkdavis (talk) 14:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Surely it is the user community that decides what is relevant and what is not, how can you say that this is an unimportant viewpoint of a minority? there are literally thousands of these people around the globe involved in this, and you choose to write large articles about small groups with only dozens of members? Respectfully, what you define as 'important enough' is clearly a biased viewpoint, this is a large society of people creating certain wonders, to deny them even a paragraph is denying their right to be regarded as good people. It's not like they asked you to write a whole article on the topic, which has been done several times on this site on similar micronational substances. Dont tell me that this is not important, because if i chose to reject everything that i found 'unimportant', wikipedia would be a very small site. Reconsider your viewpoint, because people will be interested in this subject and visit your site to learn about them. --BritannianVanguard (talk) 18:26, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

None of this makes micronations relevant here as per Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. See WP:UNDUE. If people want to know about micronations, they are perfectly welcome to go to the articles micronation or List of micronations. Pfainuk talk 20:17, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Maybe if you didn't delete the pages that micronations create then we would create pages as you suggest we do. But until that happens it is pretty pointless for us to do work only to have it deleted. 94.7.209.243 (talk) 21:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

If you wish to see coverage in a Wiki format of subjects that do not meet Wikipedia's standards of notability, neutrality or verifiability, I suggest you try Wikia. Indeed, I notice that such a Wiki already exists there. Pfainuk talk 22:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

shoudent the microwiki be on here. its useful to learn more stuff and it would help alot with more learning about it. i agree with adding the micro wiki. from plahunter101 3:17 PM

Terrestrial vertebrates

The "Fauna" section says "Few terrestrial vertebrates live in Antarctica", implying that some do, but these are never identified. In fact, it's unclear exactly what "terrestrial" and "purely terrestrial" (a term used later apparently in contrast) are supposed to mean, especially as regards birds. The website to which the opening statement is sourced says:

"Few terrestrial vertebrates are resident in Antarctica and those which do occur are limited to sub-Antarctic islands. These include a single endemic insectivorous passerine (the South Georgia Pipit (Anthus antarcticus)) and freshwater ducks on South Georgia and/or Kerguelen."

This seems to be extending the scope of "Antarctica" to include places like South Georgia, whereas one gets the distinct impression that this article is describing the fauna of continental Antarctica.

So, in summary, several things need doing here:

• Define "terrestrial" and "purely terrestrial"
• Define "Antarctica"
• Enumerate the terrestrial vertebrates, if any.

86.160.208.20 (talk) 03:05, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 77.188.67.244, 3 April 2011

1. CURRENT text version:

Mesozoic era (250–65 Ma) [...] In Eastern Antarctica, the seed fern became established, and large amounts of sandstone and shale were laid down at this time. [...]

2. NEW text version:

Mesozoic era (250–65 Ma) [...] In Eastern Antarctica, the seed ferns of the Glossopteris flora became established, and large amounts of sandstone and shale were laid down at this time. [...]

SOURCE: See e.g. the Wikipedia lemma on Glossopteris.

Regards

77.188.67.244 (talk) 14:57, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. (Please see WP:RS; Wikipedia articles cannot be used as sources.) If you do so, please re-open this request. — UncleBubba ^{( T @ C )} 22:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Neogene forests

Hi. The paragraph on forests occurring within a short distance of the South Pole roughly 3 million years ago is backed up by three citations. However, there are a few problems in citing this claim:

• The first reference is from 1986, and highlights some uncertainty in the radiometric dating of the fossil forest, saying that it could be older than a few million years. It also mentions another process, that open water could have carried other fossil traces to mountains that are now buried under ice. The significance was not known, so it needs to be backed up by later sources that either directly mention this initial study or directly refer to the Neogene period.
• The second citation from Discovery News discusses the Permian period. I could not find any reference to the Neogene or the Webb discovery, and one major fossil location is on the coastline of the Ross Sea.
• The third one shows information on a wide selection of fossils, but the only mention of plant fossils refers to either the Antarctic Peninsula or fossils laid down during the Mesozoic on West Antarctica. There is still no mention of more recent forests near the South Pole.

I'm not suggesting this information be removed, just so that it is corrected and placed into other time periods listed in the article on the geologic history if needed. It would help to cite more scientific journals or science news websites following up on the Neogene forest discoveries. I also suggest clarifying what the fossils actually are. Thanks. ~AH1 ^(discuss!) 02:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Not coldest place on Earth

That title belongs to the mesopause. Antarctica is the coldest place on the surface of the earth. Robopologist (talk) 21:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

A technically correct but unhelpful statement. In common usage by most people "coldest place" means on the surface. If we applied your kind of definition, we could say that the hottest place in my country is 3,000km below the surface. I don't think we need to move away from common usage on this one. HiLo48 (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Note on facts used and References not working

1. The average thickness of ice in Antarctica including ice shelves is 1958m. (Please Cut at least 1.6 km thick) Source: http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/teacher_resources/resources/factsheets/index.php

2. The Exact Area is not 14 Million but 13,829,430km2 Danny shimel

For reference in size: Around 58 times the size of the UK, or 1.4 times the size of the USA, or area of India and China combined.(Source: as above)

3. The reference for the amount of precipitation (number 6) is not correct.

4. To date 48 countries have signed the treaty, this includes 28 countries which have set up their research stations in Antarctica and are members of the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs(COMNAP) and 20 others. Source: http://www.ats.aq/devAS/ats_parties.aspx?lang=e

5. In two short words the main aim of the treaty is to promote Peace and Science without damaging the environment.

6. For number of scientists please mention “around 5000 during the summer and around 1000 during the winter"

7. In the " Geography" section it says " Antarctica occupies more than 14 Million...." False, as reported area is less than that. See point 2.

Nathanian Palmer (talk) 14:53, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Date Amundsen and Scott reached the South Pole

I've seen both December 14 and 15, 1911 for Amundsen and January 17/18, 1912 for Scott.

Is the difference based on the time it would have been in their actual homelands of Norway and Great Britain, perhaps? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zz pot (talk • contribs) 01:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The sign at the pole commemorating these events have Dec 14, and January 17. I'm not sure about the other dates. The south pole doesn't really have a time zone. The base now follows NZ time mostly because its convenient for logistics, but when you are standing at the south pole you are technically in all time zones, depending, I suppose where you put your feet. Warsky (talk) 04:04, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Antarctic Circumpolar Current

There's an interesting research on the impact of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) on Antarctic glaciation published in Science on May 27. Here's the abstract. Regards, Cinosaur (talk) 08:25, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

The first-human-born rubbish

This desinformational trivia is reoccurring in diverse articles:

first child born in the southern polar region [here and Antarctic there] was Norwegian girl Solveig Gunbjørg Jacobsen, born

She was born in Grytviken, South Georgia, part of South America. This factoid is just annoying trivia, presenting a record holder that is not a record holder. Not encyclopedic! Rursus dixit. (^mbork³!) 16:10, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

well then was, if its annoying trivia, then can you say who's the real first person? plahunter101 3:22 pm

Work needed

Hello everyone! This article currently appears near the top of the cleanup listing for featured articles, with several cleanup tags. Cleanup work needs to be completed on this article, or a featured article review may be in order. Please contact me on my talk page if you have any questions. Thank you! Dana boomer (talk) 19:34, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I see that some work has been done in cleaning up the article since my post above. However, there are still several tags and other issues that need attention - is anyone willing to work on these outside the remit of FAR? Besides the citation needed and dubious/discuss tags, as well as three dead link tags, I see several areas where statistics (populations, snowfall, etc.) are given without references, plus references missing information (correct titles, publishers, etc), and an extensive see also section that should probably be trimmed and have as many links as possible incorporated into the article text. Thanks, Dana boomer (talk) 19:53, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Eastern/Western Antartica

In the Climate section, the text refers to Eastern and Western Antarctica. Referring to the East and the West of Antarctica should be used to clarify location, but what Eastern and Western Antarctica are is unclear. Could someone who knows what this means clarify. Thanks, pluma Ø 02:36, 9 October 2011 (UTC).

The best place to find that sort of thing out is by looking at the Geography section. Do you find anything unclear about the 2nd paragraph there? Franamax (talk) 05:00, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Photo of south pole not actual south pole

The photo presented under the "Population" section claiming to be the South Pole, is actually only the ceremonial South Pole, used largely for photo-ops. The actual south pole is a several hundred feet away and moves about 30' per year (well, the pole doesn't move, the ice sheet does). There is a separate marker, set out each year (and different each year), with the current position of the South Pole. I would be glad to provide photos from early 2000's of these markers, however, as a new user I cannot modify this semi-protected article.

Warsky (talk) 03:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, South Pole describes it better than this article. I amended the caption. Feel free to suggest further improvement. You'll need 4 days and 10 edits after registration to edit semiprotected articles. Materialscientist (talk) 03:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from , 4 November 2011

In the first sentence of the history section, the article describes the "northern lands of Europe, Asia and North Africa." "North Africa" should instead be "North America".

66.116.20.134 (talk) 02:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, no time to think, and just a quick comment - was America known at the time relevant to that sentence? Materialscientist (talk) 03:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Not done, per Materialscientist. Europe, Asia and North Africa were the entire "known" world at the time - though the sentence is a little Eurocentric. Franamax (talk) 04:52, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request: Antarctica in popular media

I hope there is a section or a page about Antarctica in popular media and summerize how fictions, adventure stories, science fictions, movies and documentary see Antarctica.111.251.230.222 (talk) 02:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC)