User:Abyssal/Prehistory of South America

Portal maintenance status: (July 2018)

This portal is manually maintained by Tisquesusa. Please contact these user(s) when you plan to make significant changes.
This portal's subpages should be checked. Subpages that are no longer needed should be reported here.

Please take care when editing, especially if using automated editing software, and seek consensus before making major changes. Learn how to update the maintenance information here.

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Prehistory of South America Portal

edit

Introduction

The Prehistory of South America portal collects and presents articles, images and categories on the prehistorical period in time (before 10,000 years ago) of the continent South America. South America has a rather unique prehistory, both regarding the human settlement prehistory and early history and the flora and fauna prehistory of the continent. For approximately 115 million years, since the Aptian, the continent was no longer connected to Africa and the other landmasses of Eurasia and North America and during the early Cenozoic, the continent became unconnected to Australia. The only connection to another continent was with Antarctica, that drifted away in the late Eocene, approximately 35 million years ago.

The next 30 million years, until the late Miocene to early Pliocene (6-4 million years ago), South America was completely isolated from the other landmasses, separated by the Atlantic, Pacific, Antarctic and paleo-Caribbean oceans. This caused the evolution of a unique prehistoric fauna and flora in South America. Due to plate tectonic movements in the Neogene, the isthmus of Panama was formed, leading to the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), drastically reshaping the faunal assemblages of both Americas, but South America in particular, with many more migration from north to south than vice versa.

The history of human settlement was equally recent, with the oldest evidences dating to approximately 18,500 years ago (Monte Verde, Chile). Human migration resembled the migration of prehistoric animals; via the Isthmus of Panama, arriving first in what is now Colombia. The indigenous people spread out across the continent with hunter-gatherer lifestyles. The human prehistory is followed by a period of sedentary settlement and the development of agriculture into various civilizations.

Show new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article on prehistoric South America

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals that first appeared during the Triassic period, 231.4 million years ago, and were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years, from the beginning of the Jurassic until the end of the Cretaceous (66 million years ago), when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of most dinosaur groups. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs and, consequently, they are considered a subgroup of dinosaurs by many paleontologists. Some birds survived the extinction event and their descendants continue the dinosaur lineage to the present day.

Using fossil evidence, paleontologists have identified over 500 distinct genera of non-avian dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are represented on every continent. Some are herbivorous, others carnivorous. While dinosaurs were ancestrally bipedal, many extinct groups included quadrupedal species. Elaborate display structures such as horns or crests are common to all dinosaur groups, and some extinct groups developed skeletal modifications such as bony armor and spines. Evidence suggests that egg laying and nest building are additional traits shared by all dinosaurs. While modern birds are generally small due to the constraints of flight, many prehistoric dinosaurs were large-bodied—the largest sauropod dinosaurs may have achieved lengths of 58 meters (190 feet). Many dinosaurs were quite small: Xixianykus, for example, was only about 50 cm (20 in) long. (see more...)

More articles...

Need help?

Do you have a question about Abyssal/Prehistory of South America that you can't find the answer to?

Consider asking it at the Wikipedia reference desk.

edit

Selected image

An ant preserved in a small, roughly 1.5 cm by 2 cm piece of Colombian amber.
Photo credit: Brocken Inaglory

More pictures...

edit

Did you know?

... that Francisco Javier Muñiz was considered the first important naturalist from Argentina?

... that the archaeological site of Chan-Chan gives its name to the Chanchaense Complex, a archaeological culture extending across Chile from 37° to 55° South?