Our observant listener says, to no one in particular..."that is a pretty dumb answer."

The Blue Whale is the biggest animal that ever lived because the ice cap on Antarctica froze the ocean, made the salty water which sank to the bottom, bringing up nutrients for the diatoms, and feeding the krill. We got that far. But now there seems to be a problem. The story cannot end there. Not if our young student listener wants to keep asking why?

To explain why there is an ice cap we have to go back farther in time. We have to back to the time before there was an ice cap; before there were Blue Whales.

We have to go so far back that the continent of Antarctica was not even at the South Pole. It was somewhere else. When the land finally did move to the South Pole, it was plenty cold there, but at first there was no ice. The winds coming off the land were cold, and the first storms over the ocean were strong, but they were not strong enough to make an ice cap.

Previous Page.......................Next Page