Turtle Chill Zone: 10 Facts About The Amazon River

Friday, June 28, 2019

10 Facts About The Amazon River

Residing in northern South America and cutting through the countries of Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana and Bolivia, the Amazon River is one of the longest, mightiest, and deadliest rivers in the entire world.

Despite debate over it, most people believe the Amazon's source to be in Peru's Andean Mountains.
Up until around fifteen million years ago, the Amazon river flowed out into the pacific. The Andean Mountains were then created and it took the Amazon another five million years before it finally started trickling into the Atlantic.
20% of the world's freshwater ends up in the Atlantic through the Amazon.
The Amazon doesn't form a delta due to the unusually turbulent nature of the Atlantic.
Though nearly suffering a heart attack, Martin Strel swam the whole 3,274 miles of the Amazon River in 66 days on April 8th, 2007.
In some studies, the Amazon River is considered to actually be 4,225 miles long, making it longer than the Nile, which is stretches 4,160 miles.
Certain parts of the river are too wide for a person to stand on the banks and see the other side. Its width varies among varying parts of the river and during different times of the year. During the drier seasons, it's between one and six miles, but during the wet season it can reach up to thirty.
The Amazon river inhabits the most diverse ecosystem than any other river in the world.
The forests surrounding the Amazon spreads across 1.4 billion acres of land, containing over half of the world's remaining tropical forests.
The Amazon Basin is about 2.6 square miles, 40% of South America.