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Article: Flow west, young river: ancient Amazon ran opposite today's route.
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- November 4, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The forerunner of the mighty Amazon ran from east to west, a new analysis of rocks laid down by that ancient river suggests.
About one-fifth of all the fresh water that reaches the world's oceans today does so via the Amazon. That river now flows eastward from the Andes for more than 6,000 kilometers, notes Russell W. Mapes, a geologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. But that wasn't always the case, Mapes and his colleagues reported last week in Philadelphia at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.
The evidence for the river's flow reversal lies within rocks deposited as sediment by the proto-Amazon when dinosaurs still ...