AntarcticaMap of Antarctica highlighting the major geographic regions, ice sheets, and sites of several research stations.(more)Emperor penguinsEmperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) in Antarctica.(more)Antarctica, the world’s southernmost and fifth largest . Its landmass is almost wholly covered by a vast .Transantarctic MountainsThe Transantarctic Mountains, northern Victoria Land, Antarctica.(more)Often described as a continent of superlatives, Antarctica is not only the world’s southernmost continent. It is also the world’s highest, driest, windiest, coldest, and iciest continent. Antarctica is about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km) in size, and thick covers about 98 percent of the land. The continent is divided into East Antarctica (which is largely composed of a high ice-covered ) and West Antarctica (which is largely an covering an archipelago of mountainous ).Lying almost concentrically around the , Antarctica’s name means “opposite to the Arctic.” It would be essentially circular except for the outflaring , which reaches toward the southern tip of (some 600 miles [970 km] away), and for two principal embayments, the and the . These deep embayments of the make the continent somewhat pear-shaped, dividing it into two unequal-sized parts. East Antarctica lies mostly in the east and is larger than West Antarctica, which lies wholly in the west longitudes. East and West Antarctica are separated by the approximately 2,100-mile- (about 3,400-km-) long .AntarcticaIceberg in the waters off Antarctica.(more)The continental ice sheet contains approximately 7 million cubic miles (about 29 million cubic km) of ice, representing about 90 percent of the world’s ice and 80 percent of its fresh . Its average thickness is about 5,900 feet (1,800 metres). , or ice sheets floating on the sea, cover many parts of the Ross and Weddell seas. These shelves—the and the -—together with other shelves around the , fringe about 45 percent of Antarctica. Around the Antarctic coast, shelves, glaciers, and ice sheets continually “calve,” or discharge, into the seas.The continent is a cold dry where access to water determines the abundance of . While the terrestrial contains more than a thousand known of organisms, most of these are microorganisms. Maritime Antarctica—the islands and coasts—supports more life than inland Antarctica, and the surrounding is as rich in life as the land is barren., Antarctica (/ æ n ˈ t ɑːr k t ɪ k ə / ⓘ) [note 1] is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole., Antarctica, the world’s southernmost continent, is almost wholly covered by an ice sheet and is about 5.5 million square miles (14.2 million square km) in size. It is divided into East Antarctica (largely composed of a high ice-covered plateau) and West Antarctica (an archipelago of ice-covered mountainous islands)..