9781422283554

 Exploring Latin America

An Isolated Land S outh America is an isolated continent. It has many animals and plants that are found nowhere else on Earth. During prehistoric times it was part of one giant land mass, called Pangaea. Over millions of years this split into two smaller land masses, called Laurasia and Gondwanaland. South America eventually drifted away from Gondwanaland around 100,000,000 years ago. The Oldest Coast The eastern coast of Latin America is geologically much older than that of the west. Although there are mountains very near the Atlantic Ocean, forming a series of bays and coves full of small islands, they are not as high as the ones on the Pacific shore. From the Andes, great rivers run east into the mighty Amazon River. Another important river, the Paraná-Paraguay, rises in the heart of the continent and reaches the sea at the La Plata Estuary . Rivers drop from the mountains in a series of waterfalls and then flow through fertile plains to the beginning of the Pampas . The Pantanal is a unique region in the middle of the continent covered with fields and forests which are flooded for half of the year. These fields are the natural habitat for rare species of fish, birds and reptiles. It is the world’s largest wetland.

T h ese are the Eastern Cordillera Mountains of Bolivia. Cordillera means chain in Spanish.

T he first people to come to North America crossed over from Asia via a massive sheet of ice 10,000 years ago. Some moved south to Latin America.

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