Antarctica is the southernmost continent, centered roughly about the South Pole, with most of its boundaries falling within the 65°S parallel. Its area, not including ice shelves and connected islands, is 12,393,000 km2. However, only 2% of this area is actually exposed bedrock. The rest is covered by the largest ice sheet in the world, having a total volume of around 24,000,000 km3, representing 89% of the earth's glacial ice. If melted, this ice would raise the global sea level by 55 m.
The I.G.Y. program of 1957–1958 led to the initiation of a comprehensive mapping scheme of Antarctica by the American Geographical Society (“Antarctic Map Folio Series”). Folio 12 of the Geologic Maps of Antarctica was initiated in 1964 and published in 1970 in 18 sheets of 1:1 million or better. This collection made possible the compilation of a single map on a 1:5,000,000 scale in 1972. Folio 16, entitled “Morphology of the Earth in the Antarctic and Subantarctic” (B. C. Heezen, M. Tharp, and C. R....
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Stump, E., Fairbridge, R.W. (1975). Antarctica . In: World Regional Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-31081-1_2
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