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Show HYRD'S SCIENTIFIC GAINS From the Antarctic, one of the richest scientific fields in the world, Rear Admiral Richard F. Byrd, brought shi luads of scientific data. His investigations and studies at the bottom of the world gathered new facts for numerous sciences. To geologists he contributed the fact that the great Andean mountain chain extended along the ocean floor and through the Antarctic continent which is larger than the United States and Mexico together. Meteorologists were given new knowledge on which to base future weather predictions. pre-dictions. They were told that the Antarctic is in the midst of an ice age similar to the one which carved new features on North America 30,000 years ago when massive glaciers swept down from the north, and that the average Antarctic temperature is 10 degrees lower than that of the Arctic regions. re-gions. Fvidence of life, both past and present, is abundant in the Antarctic. Primative plant life grows high in the mountains, bugs live on the very edge of the vast ice sheet which in some places is 9,000 feet thick, the oceans teem with life, and coal deposits tell of days past when this waste of ice was covered with towering trees and lush vegetation. The clear polar air readily yielded information which gave astronomers new ideas on the vast number of meteors which bombard the earth from outer space. Readings on terrestial magnetism were taken, cosmic ray tests were made, and it was proven that the Antarctic continent is one solid land mass. Besides coal; copper, lead, silver, and other deposits weere discovered. But they are beyond the reach of commercial com-mercial exploitation, for the present at least. : o |