Scientists say that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is retreating more slowly than they thought. In fact, it may have been growing just 8,000 years ago -- long after the end of the most recent Ice Age.

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December 27, 2000 -- New evidence suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is retreating more slowly and contributing less to rising global sea levels than scientists once thought. In fact, said researchers at a recent meeting, the sheet was still growing as recently as 8,000 years ago -- thousands of years after the most recent Ice Age.

"Our previous best estimates that the ice sheet was adding 1 millimeter per year to global sea level are almost certainly too high," says Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

Left: Antarctica is divided by the Transantarctic Mountains into East Antarctica, or "Greater Antarctica," and West Antarctica, or "Lesser Antarctica." Most of Antarctica is covered by ice, with an average thickness of nearly a mile -- constituting roughly 90 percent of the Earth's total amount of ice. The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest body of fresh water on our planet, amounting to 70 percent of the total.