Antarctic time capsule

A neat stack of seal meat sits in an enclosed porch, tins of cocoa and cabbage are piled on shelves inside, and all seems ready for Antarctic explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton to take shelter.

Of course they won't: their kind of exploration of the southern continent ended nearly a century ago. But this remote, snow-shrouded shelter hut appears eerily intact.

Prefabricated in New Zealand in 1910, transported by ship and reassembled on a spit of land on McMurdo Sound in January 1911, the hut was built for the final expedition led by Britain's Scott, whose ill-fated race to reach the South Pole has become the stuff of legend.

Posted by David on December 12, 2006 2:08 PM