Antarctica Trivia
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This Antarctica trivia quiz has 58 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 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Antarctica ranks where among the continents by area?
Fifth-largest
Fifth-largest. Nearly twice the size of Australia, it is so buried in ice that whole mountain ranges and valleys lie hidden beneath it.
Q 02About how thick is the Antarctic ice sheet on average?
2 kilometres
2 kilometres. Under the pressure of all that ice, water stays liquid at its base, and hundreds of lakes lie hidden beneath it.
Q 03If all of Antarctica's ice melted, by roughly how much would global sea levels rise?
60 metres
60 metres. Much of the West Antarctic ice sheet rests on rock below sea level, which makes it potentially unstable.
Q 04Earth's coldest known surface spots, on the East Antarctic ice sheet, were found using what?
Satellites
Satellites. They found hollows colder than -90°C, yet the official record stays a thermometer reading, since satellites gauge the ice surface rather than the air.
Q 05Besides being the coldest and windiest continent, Antarctica also holds which two records?
Driest and highest average elevation
Driest and highest average elevation. Its thin, dry air is why astronomers built the South Pole Telescope there to map faint microwave light from space.
Q 06What is the highest peak in Antarctica?
Vinson Massif
Vinson Massif is named for US congressman Carl Vinson, who championed government funding for Antarctic exploration.
Q 07Which mountain range runs from Victoria Land to Coats Land, marking the boundary between the continent's east and west?
The Transantarctic Mountains
The Transantarctic Mountains hold seams of coal, left by forests that once grew where ice lies today.
Q 08Which Antarctic glacier have reporters nicknamed the 'Doomsday Glacier' for the sea-level rise its collapse could cause?
Thwaites Glacier
Thwaites Glacier rests on the seabed rather than dry land, so warm ocean water can flow beneath it and melt it from underneath.
Q 09Blood Falls, a red outflow from the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys, gets its colour from what?
Iron oxide in salty water
Iron oxide in salty water: iron in the ancient brine beneath the glacier rusts red the moment it meets the air.
Q 10Antarctica was once part of which supercontinent, which began breaking apart about 180 million years ago?
Gondwana
Gondwana: while Antarctica was part of it, dinosaurs lived there, and their bones have been dug from its mountains.
Q 11Which is the largest purely terrestrial animal native to Antarctica?
A flightless midge
A flightless midge takes the title because Antarctica's land has no native mammals, reptiles or amphibians.
Q 12Which small crustacean is the keystone species of the Southern Ocean food web?
Antarctic krill
Antarctic krill: studies link falling krill numbers to shrinking sea ice, and chinstrap penguins that eat them declined for decades.
Q 13Which penguin is the only species that breeds through the Antarctic winter?
The emperor penguin
The emperor penguin male incubates the single egg for about nine weeks of winter darkness without eating, while the female feeds at sea.
Q 21Which member of Scott's polar party walked into a blizzard to his death on his 32nd birthday?
Lawrence Oates
Lawrence Oates walked out to his death, yet Scott, Wilson and Bowers died in their tent less than two weeks later, just 11 miles from a food depot.
Q 22Which party claimed to be the first to reach the south magnetic pole, in 1909?
Mawson, David and Mackay
Mawson, David and Mackay reached what they took to be the pole; on a later expedition, Mawson struggled back to base alone after both his sledging companions died.
Q 23Shackleton's ship Endurance was crushed by ice in which sea in 1915?
The Weddell Sea
Q 14Which Southern Ocean seabird can have wings spanning about 3 metres from tip to tip?
Wandering albatross
The wandering albatross is famous for its long migrations, but commercial fishing threatens it.
Q 15Which Antarctic seal is a top predator that hunts penguins and even the pups of other seals?
The leopard seal
In 2003 a leopard seal dragged British biologist Kirsty Brown underwater as she snorkelled, the first recorded human death caused by the species.
Q 16Whose ships made the first recorded crossing of the Antarctic Circle?
Cook
James Cook wrote that no man would ever venture farther south than he had, and that any lands beyond the ice would never be explored.
Q 17Which 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 18The first confirmed landing on the Antarctic mainland was made in 1895 by a team from which country?
Norway
Norway's whaling expedition landed its party at Cape Adare, and one of them, Carsten Borchgrevink, returned in 1899 to build huts there.
Q 19Who led the first expedition to reach the geographic South Pole, on 14 December 1911?
Roald Amundsen
Roald Amundsen hid his real goal even from his crew until the Fram reached Madeira, then reached the Pole 34 days before Scott's party.
Q 20Which Everest pioneer later drove a tractor all the way to the South Pole?
Edmund Hillary
Edmund Hillary spent the rest of his life on charity work for the Sherpa villages of Nepal.
The Weddell Sea's pack ice held Endurance for months before crushing it, and in 2022 searchers found the wreck 3,008 m down.
Q 24Shackleton sailed an open lifeboat 800 miles for help, leaving 22 men stranded on which island?
Elephant Island
Elephant Island's 22 castaways lived on seal and penguin meat for months until a small steam tug reached them, and every man survived.
Q 25Which US Navy officer led the first flight over the South Pole, in 1929?
Richard E. Byrd
Richard E. Byrd did not fly the plane himself: he was the navigator, while Bernt Balchen was the pilot.
Q 26A Soviet surgeon, the only doctor at his Antarctic station in 1961, removed what from himself?
His appendix
His appendix: Leonid Rogozov numbed his belly with a local anaesthetic, and about two weeks later he was back at his normal duties.
Q 27After Scott in 1912, nobody stood at the South Pole again until 1956, when a US Navy group arrived how?
By aircraft
By aircraft: a permanent US research station went up at the Pole later that year, as part of Operation Deep Freeze.
Q 28What helped Børge Ousland become the first person to cross Antarctica alone coast to coast in 1996-97?
A kite
A kite pulled Børge Ousland along on a few windy days, but he hauled his sledge himself most of the way and took no resupply.
Q 29Signed in 1959, the Antarctic Treaty banned what?
Military activity
Military activity is banned, yet the treaty lets troops and military equipment support scientific research.
Q 30Which Asian country was among the 12 original signatories of the Antarctic Treaty?
Japan
Japan qualified by running a research station during the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, while China and India joined only in 1983.