The cap grew fast and reached a balance between snow coming in and ice flowing out (equilbrium) about 20 million years ago, just about the time that Blue Whales started eating krill with their new baleen filters. It was the new ice cap that began freezing the ocean water that was next to the land. It was the ice cap that started the deep, salty current that brought up the phosphorous, and the nitrogen, and the silica for the diatoms. None of this happened, and none of these things could have happened, including the Blue Whale, until the other continents pulled away from Antarctica. The Antarctic continent was left alone and isolated, sitting at the South Pole, surrounded by ocean.

Pieces of sea ice. The black speck is a big seal.

The storyteller was ready to stop. " That one thing alone, moving the continents, was enough to start the snowstorms which quickly grew into an ice cap. And, because the ice cap made it possible to have a Blue Whale, I can truly say that........the Blue Whale is the biggest animal that ever lived because the continent of Antarctica slipped under, or is it over?, the South Pole.

"Why?"

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