User:Abyssal/Prehistory of South America

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The Prehistory of South America Portal

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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.

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Selected article on prehistoric South America

The list of dinosaurs is a comprehensive listing of all genera that have ever been included in the superorder Dinosauria, excluding class Aves (birds, both living and those known only from fossils) and purely vernacular terms. The list includes all commonly accepted genera, but also genera that are now considered invalid, doubtful (nomen dubium), or were not formally published (nomen nudum), as well as junior synonyms of more established names, and genera that are no longer considered dinosaurs. Many listed names have been reclassified as everything from birds to crocodilians to petrified wood. The list contains more than 1,000 names considered either valid dinosaur genera or nomina dubia. (see more...)

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

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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?