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News Front Page Last Updated: Tuesday, 24 October 2006, 15:27 GMT 16:27 UK
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Amazon river 'switched direction'

The world's largest river, SEE ALSO
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Geologist Russell Mapes says
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in the Andes, on the western 'Robin Hood' banker helped poor
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Changing landscape

If the Amazon had continuously flowed eastward, as it does

now, much younger mineral grains would be found in the
sediments, because they would have been washed down
from the Andes.

"We didn't see any. All along the basin, the ages of the
mineral grains all pointed to very specific locations in central
and eastern South America," said Mr Mapes, a graduate
student from the University of North Carolina (UNC), US.

He explained that these sediments of eastern origin were

washed down from a highland area that formed in the
Cretaceous Period, when the South American and African
tectonic plates broke away from each other.

That might have tilted the river's flow westward, sending

sediment as old as two billion years toward the centre of the
continent.

Current course

Afterwards, a relatively low ridge, called the Purus Arch, rose

in the middle of the continent, running north and south. This
divided the Amazon's flow, so that one half flowed eastward
toward the Atlantic and the other westward toward the
Andes.

In the late Cretaceous, mineral

grains younger than 500
million years old began to fill in
the basin between the Andes
mountains - in the west - and
the arch running down the
centre of the continent.

After millions of years of build

up, the Amazon river finally Over millions of years, the Amazon has
broke through these sediments reversed its flow
and flowed past the Purus arch and into the eastern side of
South America. This established the river's current course.

The new data comes from zircons, a type of mineral grain

that can be dated in order to determine the age of the
sediment.

Previous research has identified a reverse flow, but only in

segments of the river. Mr Mapes and his colleague Drew
Coleman from UNC traversed about 80% of the Amazon
basin, collecting samples of zircon.

Their data supported the previous findings, and illustrate the

continent-wide shift of the river's flow over millions of years.

The results will be presented at the Geological Society of

America's annual meeting in Philadelphia, which runs from
22-25 October.

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