A new study,
published in the journal Geology,
estimates the age of the Amazon
river at 11 million years. The
researchers found the Amazon River
originated as a transcontinental
river some 11 million years ago
and took its present shape approximately
2.4 million years ago. The Amazon
Rainforest is the world's richest
and most varied biological reservoir,
containing several million species
of insects, plants, birds, and
other forms of life, many still
unrecorded by science.
The Amazon rainforest ), also known
as Amazonia, or the Amazon jungle,
is a moist broadleaf forest that covers
most of the Amazon Basin of South
America. This basin encompasses seven
million square kilometers (1.7 billion
acres), of which five and a half million
square kilometers (1.4 billion acres)
are covered by the rainforest. This
region includes territory belonging
to nine nations. The majority of the
forest is contained within Brazil,
with 60% of the rainforest, followed
by Peru with 13%, and with minor amounts
in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia,
Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana.
States or departments in four nations
bear the name Amazonas after it. The
Amazon represents over half of the
planet's remaining rainforests, and
it comprises the largest and most
species-rich tract of tropical rainforest
in the world.[2]
