The Genesis of the Modern Amazon River Basin and Andean Uplift and Their Roles in Mammalian Diversification

Abstract

This chapter discusses the origin of the Amazon basin and Andean uplift and their roles in mammalian evolution. Information is still sparse, due to taphonomic difficulties for fossil recovery and the widespread, deep covering of recent reworked sedimentary soils in a moist tropical, acid soil environment, but lately especially new finds of earliest rodent and primate fossils have added to our knowledge of how the tropical regions have played a large role in South American mammalian evolution, evidently through many different mechanisms. The process by which the great river was originally established is an important theme discussed as well as what the conditions must have been to allow invading mammals of open country and savannah from the north to arrive at the southernmost parts of the continent.