Animals at the extremes: polar biology

Question 1

Are species in Antarctica mainly endemic?

Answer 1

Yes

Question 2

What does the fossil record in Antarctica show?

Answer 2

Diverse tropical fauna used to live there including early metatherian animals.

Question 3

What are metatherian animals?

Answer 3

A group of mammals closely related to marsupials.

Question 4

What does the term polar describe?

Answer 4

Both the Arctic and Antarctic.

Question 5

Why does the Southern Ocean have plenty of mineral nutrients? What does this mean?

Answer 5

Prevailing winds and deep currents.
Greater abundance of marine life than on most of the Arctic, apart from a few areas such as the Barents Sea around northern Norway.

Question 6

Name some nutrient poor areas.

Answer 6

Areas north of Siberia, Alaska and Canada.

Question 7

What affected biological evolution in the Arctic?

Answer 7

Pleistocene ice age.

Question 8

When was the pleistocene ice age?

Answer 8

Started in the Northern Hemisphere about a million years ago and contunied to around 10000 years ago.

Question 9

What did the climate used to be like across the world?

Answer 9

Mild up until the quarternary ice age.