Birth of the Amazon River – #365papers – 2017 – 80

#365papers for March 21, 2017

Hoorn, Bogota-A, Romero-Baez, Lammertsma, Flantua, Dantas, Dino, Carmo, and Chemale, 2017, The Amazon at sea: Onset and stages of the Amazon River from a marine record, with special reference to Neogene plant turnover in the drainage basin: Global and Planetary Change.

What’s it about?

The authors of this paper use data from an ocean core collected in the delta of the Amazon River to determine when the Amazon River began to deposit sediments into the ocean and also when it began to carry sediments all the way from the Andes Mountains.

Why does it matter?

If you want to understand how rivers affect environments, and also how mountains affect environments, its useful to know when those things formed. Then you can correlate to other data that describe the environments during critical points in time.

Why did I read this?

I am involved in a project looking at Miocene and younger mammals from Brazil. The timing of the origin of the Amazon River could matter. I’ve also spent the last couple of months thinking about ocean core data, so why not?