South America Continent and its Countries
1. South America is the fourth-largest continent, which is bounded by the Caribbean Sea to the northwest and north, the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast, east, and southeast, and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
2. It has a total area of about 6,878,000 square miles (17,814,000 square km), or roughly one-eighth of the land surface of Earth. Its geologic structure consists of two dissymmetric parts. In the larger, eastern portion, there are a number of stable shields forming highland regions.
3. The western portion of the continent is occupied almost entirely by the Andes Mountains. The Andes—formed as the South American Plate drifted westward and forced the oceanic plate to the west under it—constitute a gigantic backbone along the entire Pacific coast of the continent.
3. South America has two major mountain systems of contrasting nature. Bordering the Pacific Ocean to the west, the geologically young cordilleras of the Andes extend along the entire continent from north to south. Stretching along the continent’s northern and eastern sides are the ancient Guiana and Brazilian highlands, which are much lower in elevation and slope gently to the west; farther south are the plateaus of Patagonia.
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Argentina (Buenos Aires) |
Bolivia (La Paz) |
Brazil (Brasilia) |
|---|---|---|
|
Chile (Santiago) |
Colombia (Bogota) |
Ecuador (Quito ) |
|
Guyana (Georgetown) |
Paraguay (Asunción) |
Suriname (Paramaribo) |
|
Uruguay (Montevideo) |
Venezuela (Caracas) |
Peru (Lima) |
List of 7 continents and their countries
7 continents and their countries: The term continent is used to refer to the larger continuous masses of land on the earth’s surface, i.e., South America, Asia, North America, Africa, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia.
The continents are distributed unevenly over the earth’s surface. Amongst these continents, Asia is the largest continent by size, with approximately 44,614,000 sq km (17,226,200 square miles).
The continents differ sharply in their degree of compactness. More than two-thirds of the Earth’s land surface lies on the north side of the equator and is wider in the north than in the south. Read below to find out more about the List of 7 continents and their countries.
List of 7 continents and their countries