Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
and Southeast Asia via Antarctica, isolating South America as a continent
until its reunion with North America circa 3.5 Ma.
The physical and biological diversity of South America centers on two
prominent features of the landscape—the extent across nearly 8500 km of
the Andes Mountains (Orme 2007a, b; Young et al. 2007) and the great ba-
sins of the continent, for example, the Amazon Basin (Furley 2007) and the
Figure 2.35
Principal physiographic features of South America.
