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This Antarctica trivia quiz has 60 free questions with answers and covers the frozen continent from every angle: its geography (the ice sheet, Vinson Massif, Mount Erebus, Lake Vostok, the Ross Ice Shelf, the Dry Valleys), its brutal climate and the record low of -89.2°C, its wildlife (emperor penguins, krill, leopard seals and a flightless midge), its politics (the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, seven overlapping claims, no country, no army) and its history, from Cook crossing the Antarctic Circle and Bellingshausen sighting the ice in 1820 to Amundsen beating Scott to the Pole, Shackleton's open-boat rescue and the first baby born on the mainland in 1978. The easy questions are ones most people can answer (which pole is there, which bird breeds through its winter). The medium ones ask about the treaty, the explorers and the ozone hole. The hard ones want the year the name Antarctica was adopted, the width of the ice sheet, the number of treaty signatories and where the ozone hole was discovered. Good for geography classes, pub quizzes and armchair explorers. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Antarctica ranks where among the continents by area?
Fifth-largest
At 14.2 million square kilometres it is about 40% bigger than Europe and almost twice the size of Australia.
Q 02What is the average thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet?
1.9 km
Roughly 70% of the world's fresh water is locked up in it.
Q 03If all of Antarctica's ice melted, by roughly how much would global sea levels rise?
60 metres
The unstable West Antarctic ice sheet is the biggest source of uncertainty in century-scale projections.
Q 04What is the lowest natural air temperature ever recorded on Earth, at a Russian Antarctic base in 1983?
-89.2°C
It was recorded at Vostok Station, which sits above the largest subglacial lake in the world.
Q 05Besides being the coldest and windiest continent, Antarctica also holds which two records?
Driest and highest average elevation
Much of the interior is above 3,000 metres, which is one reason it is colder than the Arctic.
Q 06What is the highest peak in Antarctica?
Vinson Massif
It rises to 4,892 metres in the Ellsworth Mountains and was not climbed until 1966.
Q 07Which volcano on Ross Island is the southernmost active volcano on Earth?
Mount Erebus
It erupts around 10 times a day and was first climbed by Edgeworth David's party in 1908.
Q 08Which mountain range divides East Antarctica from West Antarctica?
The Transantarctic Mountains
They stretch from Victoria Land to the Ross Sea; Shackleton's party crossed them via the Beardmore Glacier in 1908.
Q 09The largest ice shelf in Antarctica, about the size of France, is named after which explorer?
James Clark Ross
It covers roughly 500,000 square kilometres and is about 800 km across.
Q 10Blood Falls, a red outflow from the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys, gets its colour from what?
Iron oxide in salty water
Hypersaline, iron-rich water seeps out of fissures in the ice and rusts on contact with air.
Q 11Antarctica was once part of which supercontinent, which began breaking up around 183 million years ago?
Gondwana
For much of its history the continent was forested and even had dinosaurs such as Cryolophosaurus.
Q 12Which is the largest purely terrestrial animal native to Antarctica?
A flightless midge
Belgica antarctica reaches all of 6 mm long; penguins and seals spend much of their lives at sea.
Q 13Which small crustacean is the keystone species of the Southern Ocean food web?
Antarctic krill
Whales, seals, squid, penguins and albatrosses all depend on it, and overfishing has forced catch limits.
Q 21By how many days did Amundsen beat Scott's Terra Nova party to the Pole?
34
Scott's five-man party reached it on 17 January 1912 and all died on the return journey.
Q 22Which member of Scott's polar party walked into a blizzard to his death on his 32nd birthday?
Lawrence Oates
Gangrene and frostbite had crippled him; the sacrifice did not save the remaining three.
Q 23Who was first to reach the south magnetic pole, in 1909?
Mawson, David and Mackay
They were part of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition, whose members also made the first ascent of Mount Erebus.
Q 14Which is the only Antarctic seabird that breeds through the polar winter?
The emperor penguin
The male incubates the single egg for over two months while the female feeds at sea.
Q 15Among penguins breeding in the Antarctic winter, which parent incubates the egg while the other goes to sea?
The male
Colonies can hold several thousand birds after treks of 50-120 km across the ice.
Q 16Which pinniped is the apex predator of the Antarctic ecosystem?
The leopard seal
Fur seals, by contrast, were hunted almost to extinction for their pelts in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Q 17In which year did Captain James Cook's ships first cross the Antarctic Circle?
1773
He came within about 120 km of the coast before field ice turned him back.
Q 18Which country sent the Bellingshausen–Lazarev expedition credited with first sighting an Antarctic ice shelf in 1820?
Russia
Their sighting came three days before Britain's Edward Bransfield saw land and ten months before American sealer Nathaniel Palmer.
Q 19The first confirmed landing on the Antarctic mainland was made in 1895 by a team from which country?
Norway
The whaling ship Antarctic reached Cape Adare; an earlier 1821 landing by the American sealer John Davis is disputed.
Q 20Who led the first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole, on 14 December 1911?
Roald Amundsen
His party travelled from the ship Fram via the Bay of Whales and the Axel Heiberg Glacier.
Q 24Shackleton's ship Endurance was crushed by ice in which sea in 1915?
The Weddell Sea
The 28 men camped on the drifting ice for months before rowing to Elephant Island.
Q 25Roughly how far did Shackleton and five men sail in the lifeboat James Caird to reach South Georgia?
800 miles
Every man left behind on Elephant Island was eventually rescued alive.
Q 26Which American explorer led four Antarctic expeditions from the 1920s to 1940s and introduced tractors there?
Richard E. Byrd
He is credited with surveying more of the continent than any other explorer, and a 1930 film about him won an Oscar.
Q 27Who became the first woman to set foot on the Antarctic mainland, in 1937?
Ingrid Christensen
Caroline Mikkelsen had landed on an Antarctic island two years earlier.
Q 28After Scott in 1912, nobody stood at the South Pole again until 1956, when a US Navy group arrived how?
By aircraft
Rear Admiral George Dufek's plane landed there on 31 October 1956; six women were flown in as a publicity stunt in 1969.
Q 29What helped Børge Ousland become the first person to cross Antarctica alone coast to coast in 1996-97?
A kite
He also holds the record for the fastest unsupported journey to the Pole, 34 days.
Q 30In which year was the Antarctic Treaty opened for signature?
1959
It came into force in 1961 and was the first arms-control agreement of the Cold War.