Annelida: Figure 2. Oligochaeta. (A) the enchitreid Marionina argentea; (B) the naidid Pristina aequiseta; (C) the tubificid Rhyacodrilus amphigenus. Reproduced with permission from Timm (1999).

The first caver on Antarctica was probably Emile Racoviţǎ, who arrived in the Peninsula in January 1898. An ice cave entrance appears in a photo taken during the Scott expedition in 191.1, but it wasn’t until the mid-1970s that the first cave exploration took place. During the Tazieff expedition to Mount Erebus, some fumarole caves were explored in the volcano, near the US MacMurdo base. In the 1980s, some classic glacier caves, created by water flow, were explored in the Schirmacher Oasis, near the Russian base of Novolazarevskaya (Queen Maud Land). The caves, in the glacier front, consist of some outflow conduits draining internal glacier waters. Later, in 1985, other fumarole caves were explored on Mt Melbourne, by Italian glaciologists. These early explorations were made during the course of research with other objectives and the first caving expedition to Antarctica was in March 2000, when small ice caves (moulins) were explored in the Collins Glacier on King George Island, South Shetlands.