Captain Robert Falcon Scott, leader of the British National Antarctic Expedition (1901-1904), discovered the Drygalski Ice Tongue in January 1902 and named it for Professor Erich von Drygalski, a contemporary German explorer then in Antarctica.

The David Glacier grounding line, where the ice leaves the shore and begins to float, is in a depth of ~1,900 m (6,200 ft).

[2] The floating ice tongue itself is a significant factor contributing to the frequent formation of the Terra Nova Bay polynya.

[5] In 2016 a 30 km (19 mi) long section of the ice shelf calved to form two large icebergs.

Scientists are also concerned for several penguin colonies which have been isolated from the open sea by the two large bodies of ice.