peninsula claimed by Britain, Chile, and Argentina. It forms an 800-mile (1,300-kilometre) northward extension of Antarctica toward the southern tip of South America. The peninsula is ice-covered and mountainous, the highest point being Mount Jackson at 13,750 feet (4,190 metres). Marguerite Bay indents the west coast, and Bransfield Strait separates the peninsula from the South Shetland Islands to the north. Many other islands and floating ice shelves lie off the coast. Several of the ice shelves broke up during the 1980s and ’90s.
One of the first recorded sightings of Antarctica occurred on Jan. 30, 1820, when William Smith, a sealer, and Edward Bransfield, of the Royal Navy, sailed through what is now Bransfield Strait and saw the Antarctic Peninsula. Many nations have operated Antarctic Survey stations on the peninsula or adjacent islands.
Link to this article and share the full text with the readers of your Web site or blog-post.
If you think a reference to this article on "Antarctic Peninsula" will enhance your Web site,
blog-post, or any other web-content, then feel free to link to this article,
and your readers will gain full access to the full article, even if they do not subscribe to our service.
You may want to use the HTML code fragment provided below.
We welcome your comments. Any revisions or updates suggested for this article will be reviewed by our editorial staff. Contact us here.
Regular users of Britannica may notice that this comments feature is less robust than in the past. This is only temporary, while we make the transition to a dramatically new and richer site. The functionality of the system will be restored soon.