Madrid - Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf is rapidly disintegrating, Spanish scientists reported on Tuesday, with potentially ominous implications for climate change.

An ice sheet of 14,000 square kilometres has broken off from the Wilkins Shelf, and has itself broken into several large icebergs, according to a statement from Spain's National Research Council (CSIC).

CSIC scientists aboard the Hesperides maritime research vessel spotted the disintegration, about 1,600 kilometres south of the southern tip of South America.

Buenos Aires  - A ship carrying 74 passengers and a crew of 30 ran aground near an Argentine base in Antarctica Tuesday, although it was expected to move out on its own once the tide came in later in the day.

The captain of the Ocean Nova, sailing under a Bahamas flag, said everyone on board was safe and that the ship had suffered no damage, Argentine Navy spokesman Roberto Ulloa told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

A "Census of Marine Life" aiming to explore the oceans from microbes to whales has put forward the fact that many octopuses evolved from a common ancestor that lived off Antarctica more than 30 million years ago.

A very mysterious meeting place for white sharks in the eastern Pacific Ocean and algae thriving at -25 degrees Celsius (-13 Fahrenheit) in the Arctic was also discovered by researchers from 82 nations, whose 10-year study has the motive to help protect life in the seas.

London, September 13: In what is being considered an unusual side effect of global warming, the amount of sea ice around Antarctica has grown recently.

According to a report in New Scientist, in the southern hemisphere winter, when emperor penguins huddle together against the biting cold, ice on the sea around Antarctica has been increasing since the late 1970s, perhaps because climate change means shifts in winds, sea currents or snowfall.

The scientists have found the traces of remains of organisms in the barren valleys in Antarctica. Tundra was present on the frozen continent fourteen million years ago. The plants and animals are expected to become extinct due to an abrupt climate cooling of 8 degree Celsius before 200,000 years. The similar vegetation can be found in some areas of Alaska, Canada and Siberia. The scientists have also expressed the possibility of mosses, sea birds and insects at Antarctica.