WI: South America-Antarctica Land Bridge

Let's imagine an alternate geological scenario in which tierra de fuego and the Antarctica peninsula are connected somehow (an Antarctic peninsula stretching further North, Tierra de Fuego stretching further South, both, a archipelagoes of large islands all close together and easily within reach from one another leading to Antarctica).

How would this effect the migration of Southern American natives? How far South would they go before the climate becomes too difficult? Would we get "Antarctic Natives"? How would this effect the exploration/colonization of both continents when Europeans arrive?
 
MAJOR climate changes

The current that circumnavigates Antarctica is a critical part of the thermohaline circulation; Earth's climate would likely be nearly unrecognizable. The Atlantic and Indian/Pacific basins would be effectively separate oceans, although with incidental connections at the north pole and the Cape of Good Hope.
 
The Fuegians OTL would have been perfect for Antarctic natives (probably not ranging much further than the Antarctic Peninsula, however) judging by accounts of their physique and the fact they already lived in a pretty desolate land, but they lacked an easy way to get there. Given time, some Fuegian group could probably have adapted to the Antarctic Peninsula in a manner like the ancestors of the Inuit adapted to the Arctic.
 

trurle

Banned
Will be a very heated grab of the islands in the Drake Passage in the attempt to control the Atlantic-Pacific route. I expect some British and Spanish colonies established in Drake Passage islands around 1800. Also, the Antarctic will be much warmer, with Brazil Current bringing Iceland-like conditions to the Antarctic Peninsula. Most likely, the Antarctic Peninsula will be ultimately controlled by British, especially their Canadian subjects. The province name..well, "South Canada" may stick. ;)
 
As NHBL pointed out, this would majorly disrupt the Earth's climate. Antarctica in particular would be substantially warmer (and possibly ice-free, if only seasonally) without the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to isolate it. I don't know close to enough about climatology or ecology to confidently speculate on precisely how a warmer Antarctica would affect the wider world, but at the very least this sort of major disruption would probably butterfly away the most recent cycle of ice ages of the last 2.5 million years. No Quaternary ice ages as they occurred OTL means humans never evolve in the first place and so the question of when Antarctica is settled and by whom is moot to begin with.

With regards to animals and plants, I'd like to think that you'd see a shared South American-Antarctic-Australian fauna continue to exist, with a lot of the weirder South American marsupial and ungulate lineages holding out in the deep south after the Great American Interchange. Sort of like how Green Antarctica turned out, just without all the torture and cannibalism.
 
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