AP BIOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Antarctica is a desert. It does not rain or snow a lot there. When it snows, the snow does not melt and builds up over many years to make large, thick sheets of ice, called ice sheets. Antarctica is made up of lots of ice in the form of glaciers, ice shelves and icebergs.

Detailed explanation-2: -Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, and most isolated continent on Earth, and is considered a desert because its annual precipitation can be less than 51 mm in the interior. It’s covered by a permanent ice sheet that contains 90% of the Earth’s fresh water.

Detailed explanation-3: -Any place where the climate hardly has any rain is actually called a desert. Arctic rain comes instead in the form of snow. Antarctica is extremely cold. The coldest ever recorded temperature there was in 1983 at-128.6°F.

Detailed explanation-4: -Antarctica is the only continent to contain only one biome: the polar regions of the south pole! The species native to this continent feature exciting adaptations, and students can deduce why no examples of amphibian or reptile species are found there.

Detailed explanation-5: -By 23 million years ago, Antarctica was mostly icy forest and for the last 15 million years, it has been a frozen desert under a thick ice sheet.