Read the following paragraph and answer the following questions :

Fifty five millions years ago the dance of the continents drove India to begin to crash into Eurasia and thrust up the huge Himalayas. Ever since, this towering mountain range has been vigorously eroded by high altitude glaciers and rains. The minerals of the rocks react with carbon di oxide dissolved in rainwater, which then flows in rivers to the ocean where it is used by marine life to build their calcium carbonate shells. When these creatures die, their shells drift to the sea floor and become buried. Thus the Himalayas are being gradually dissembled grain by grain and in the process carbon di oxide is locked away from the atmosphere. While this is a powerful mechanism for effectively sucking CO₂ out of the air, it still took around 20 million years to reduce the high levels of this greenhouse gas from the Cretaceous Period to below the threshold where the world became cool enough for ice to start forming at the poles.

While the young Himalayas eroded, continental drift carried Antarctica to its current position over the south pole, and Australia and South America rode north. This isolated Antarctica and opened up an unobstructed sea path right around the pole, a great oceanic moat completely surrounding the southern continent. A strong ocean current circling Antarctica became established, and this blocked warm ocean currents from the equator reaching Antarctica shores, keeping the continent chilled. The first permanent ice cap began to form an Antarctica about 35 million years ago.