Portal:Latin America
Latin America often refers to the regions in the Americas in which Romance languages are the main languages. It is "commonly used to describe South America (with the exception of Suriname, Guyana and the Falkland islands), plus Central America, Mexico, and most of the islands of the Caribbean". In a narrow sense, it refers to Spanish America, and often it may also include Brazil (Portuguese America). The term "Latin America" may be used more broadly than Hispanic America, which specifically refers to Spanish-speaking countries; and more narrowly than categories such as Ibero-America, a term that refers to both Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries from the Americas, and sometimes from Europe. The term Latin America was first used in Paris at a conference in 1856 called "Initiative of America: Idea for a Federal Congress of the Republics" (Iniciativa de la América. Idea de un Congreso Federal de las Repúblicas), by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao. The term was further popularized by French emperor Napoleon III's government of political strongman that in the 1860s as Latin America to justify France's military involvement in the Second Mexican Empire and to include French-speaking territories in the Americas, such as French Canada, Haiti, French Louisiana, French Guiana, Martinique, Guadeloupe and the French Antillean Creole Caribbean islands Saint Lucia, and Dominica, in the larger group of countries where Spanish and Portuguese languages prevailed. (Full article...) Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
Thalassodromeus is a genus of pterosaur that lived in what is now Brazil during the Early Cretaceous period, about a hundred million years ago. The original skull, discovered in 1983 in the Araripe Basin of northeastern Brazil, was collected in several pieces. In 2002, the skull was made the holotype specimen of Thalassodromeus sethi by palaeontologists Alexander Kellner and Diogenes de Almeida Campos. The generic name means "sea runner" (in reference to its supposed mode of feeding), and the specific name refers to the Egyptian god Seth due to its crest being supposedly reminiscent of Seth's crown. Other scholars have pointed out that the crest was instead similar to the crown of Amon. A jaw tip was assigned to T. sethi in 2005, became the basis of the new genus Banguela in 2015, and assigned back to Thalassodromeus as the species T. oberlii in 2018, though other researchers consider it a valid genus. Another species (T. sebesensis) was described in 2015 based on a supposed crest fragment, but this was later shown to be part of a turtle shell. Thalassodromeus had one of the largest known skulls among pterosaurs, around 1.42 m (4 ft 8 in) long, with one of the proportionally largest cranial crests of any vertebrate. Though only the skull is known, the animal is estimated to have had a wingspan of 4.2 to 4.5 m (14 to 15 ft). The crest was lightly built and ran from the tip of the upper jaw to beyond the back of the skull, ending in a unique V-shaped notch. The jaws were toothless, and had sharp upper and lower edges. Its skull had large nasoantorbital fenestrae (opening that combined the antorbital fenestra in front of the eye with the bony nostril), and part of its palate was concave. The lower jaw was blade-like, and may have turned slightly upwards. The closest relative of Thalassodromeus was Tupuxuara; both are grouped in a clade that has been placed within either Tapejaridae (as the subfamily Thalassodrominae) or within Neoazhdarchia (as the family Thalassodromidae). (Full article...) TopicsMore did you know -
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Selected article -Quito (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkito] ; Quechua: Kitu), officially San Francisco de Quito, is the capital of Ecuador, with an estimated population of 2.8 million in its metropolitan area. It is also the capital of the province of Pichincha. Quito is located in a valley on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes. Quito's elevation of 2,850 m (9,350 ft) makes it either the highest or the second highest capital city in the world. This varied standing is because Bolivia is a country with multiple capitals; if La Paz is considered the Bolivian national capital, it tops the list of highest capitals, but if Sucre is specified as the capital, then it is the second highest, behind Quito. (Full article...) Did you know (auto-generated)
General imagesThe following are images from various Latin America-related articles on Wikipedia.
Selected panoramaThe Juscelino Kubitschek bridge (Portuguese: Ponte Juscelino Kubitschek), also known as the President JK Bridge or just the JK Bridge, is a steel and concrete bridge that crosses Lake Paranoá in Brasília, capital of Brazil. Selected pictureMoai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500 CE.Nearly half are still at Rano Raraku, the main moai quarry, but hundreds were transported from there and set on stone platforms called ahu around the island's perimeter. Almost all moai have overly large heads three-eighths the size of the whole statue. The moai are chiefly the living faces (aringa ora) of deified ancestors (aringa ora ata tepuna).The statues still gazed inland across their clan lands when Europeans first visited the island, but most were cast down during later conflicts between clans.
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CountriesTerritories (in bold), dependencies, and subnational entities of a country not located primarily in Latin America are italicized.
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