when did the ice shelves that now cover the east and west coasts of antarctica form?

Question

you dont have to give me a long detailed answer i would just like to know. please help if you can?

Answer 1

The same time as the North and North Coasts - Antarctica does not have East and West Coasts - you have to identify areas by their names because from the South Pole all directions are North and Antarctica is basically round.
That being said - about 11,000 years
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1429905.htm

Answer 2

Pretty much around the same time the Antarctic continental plate positioned itself over the South Pole. And it's been there for about 350 million years. It was landlocked by other continents though, so Antarctica had vast glaciers but its ice shelves surrounded only a small percentage of its coast (somewhere around it's "tail").

Until the Cretaceous, it's likely that only the southern coast of Antarctica had ice shelves because the continent was bound by other members of the Gondwana supercontinent. Then when Australia, India, Africa and South America got out of the way, Antarctica was isolated and its coasts finally formed ice shelves.

P.S.:

354-290 million years: ice shelves around the southern coast ("tail" + part under Oceania)

144-65 million years: ice shelves formed around other coastlines.

Answer 3

Obviously there is no physical evidence other than the massive amount of ice and the craters in the moon, but one theory is that an ice comet was broken and the earth pulled some of the ice into it's poles (where the magnetic poles are: North pole and South pole) and the moon was hit by some of it causing the craters on the moon. Then the ice on the moon evaporated when the sun shone on it and dissipated through the thin atmosphere into space, whereas the ice on the earth was protected by the earth's ozone layer.

Answer 4

I always thought that ice covered antartica around 3 millions years ago too! Well I am looking at it from a biological viewpoint as that is about the time the beech forests disappeared from there.....prior to this it was thought it was iced over for about 10million years!

Answer 5

Around 3 million years ago. Or thereabouts...but's it's a little unsure. The idea is they formed at around the beginning of the Ice Age.

Answer 6

there is very cold and the sun is very weak and the Antarctica gets not enough Sunn! That's why is cold there! Where is no Su there is cold. You know it's not close to the equator