Elizabeth Myers, age 9, of Lawrence, Indiana, for her question:

Was Antarctica always covered with snow?

If you visit Antarctica, all you see is ice    ice and frozen snow in every direction. The frosty ice under your feet is more than a mile thick. It took countless snowfalls to make all that ice and the ice caps have been there for thousands of years. But our curious scientists have been wondering about the past, wondering and probing down through the ice. They found all sorts of things that must have been there before Antarctica was frozen over. In some places they found beds of coal. And all the world's big black coal beds were made from ancient forests. Nowadays, Antarctica is too cold for plants of any sort. But ages ago it must have been much warmer. When the coal forests grew there, the ground was not buried under frozen snows.

Scientists have also found the bones of lizards that once lived in Antarctica. Reptiles of course cannot abide the cold. They must live in fairly warm climates. Certainly Antarctica was not always buried under those massive glaciers.