There's another, more subtle, and perhaps more powerful reason that Antarctica is such a great place to look for meteorites. As meteorites fall from space, sprinkled across the East Antarctic icesheet, they get incorporated into this growing pile of snow and ice. But this ice sags under its own weight, and over time slides out to the edges of the continent, where it calves off big icebergs which carry their cargo of meteorites to an icy grave. However, in some areas the ice has to pass over or around major mountain ranges, and in these areas the ice has to slow down, turn corners, or push over buried peaks. This in turn exposes the ice to the fierce,dry katabatic winds of the polar plateau, and the ice surface can begin to recede as it sublimates away. However, the meteorites can't evaporate, so they start to pile up, and over periods of tens or hundreds of thousands of years, very significant concentrations can build up.