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The ice layer is constantly moving and covering things up, so it will be close to impossible to find for example Scott's body and tent 100 years later. At some
by fifilura 2y ago
The ice layer is constantly moving and covering things up, so it will be close to impossible to find for example Scott's body and tent 100 years later.
At some point some artifacts or bodies will reach the glacier edge and drop into the sea.
And for the north, most of it is just ice shelfs anyway.
Then again, not that many people died in arctic expeditions. As someone mentioned, mountaineering is a slaughterhouse in comparison. Particularly compared to the size of the Antarctic continent.
One example of the case you mentioned though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon_expedition#Recovery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9e%27s_Arctic_balloon...
- ajb 2y agoAh, that explains why there aren't thousands of years worth of dead penguins down there.
- rascul 2y agoMaybe there is https://www.livescience.com/63525-penguin-mummies-antarctica.html https://www.livescience.com/63525-penguin-mummies-antarctica...
- fifilura 2y agoHm, that is interesting. Penguins tend to live on solid ground though AFAIK.
- ajb 2y agoI guess the solid ground still has some ice cover that moves?
- quuxplusone 2y agoI would have thought, also, that penguins tend to live and die near the coastline (where the ice meets the water, I mean, not where the land under the ice disappears) — and tend to correlate with things that like to eat dead penguins. But (1) the preserved Scott dog in the article is on Cape Evans maybe not too far from the coast? and (2) now I wonder if I'm wrong about penguin habits. I'd like to hear more.
- ajb 2y agoAccording to the film "march of the penguins", Emperor penguins walk up to 70km onto the ice, so that their chicks can grow without risk of falling through the melting ice. But by the time they are independent, the ice has melted nearly to the nesting ground, so I guess it is still "near the coast" in a sense.