What were the Arctic and Antarctic areas like before they froze up?
The arctic has no land mass. There are some small islands which are causing political disputes as they are emerging from the ice, but they should be regarded as part of Europe and Asia. The antartic was orginally part of the same mega-continent as all the other land mass in the world. It has some high mountains and active volcanoes. The south pole is quite high above sea level, 9,300 ft, but the land underneath is estimated to be at less than 500ft above sea level. It has the highest average height above sea level of any continent. In size Anartica is larger than Europe. Most of antartica is considered to be desert because of the lack of precipitation. The driest place in the world is in Antarctica. Having broken away from the supercontinent life evovled and it had simlar fauna to Australia which it was still connect to. These included reptiles, birds and marsupials. Most creatures died off as the continent drifted south. The successful survivors being penguins, fur seals and the snow
