Extreme points of North America. Official name: United States of America (USA)

Hello dear readers! Today I have prepared a material on the mainland of North America. I would like to walk a little through the main characteristics of this continent, well, let's start.

The continent of North America is located in the northern hemisphere. In the south, it connects with South America, and the border between these two continents is drawn through the Isthmus of Darien, and sometimes through the Isthmus of Panama.

North America includes the West Indies and Central America. The area is 20.36 million km 2 (together with the islands 24.25 million km 2).

North America is washed by the Bering Sea, the Pacific Ocean (more about this ocean you can read here), the Gulf of California and the Gulf of Alaska in the west; the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the Caribbean Sea, the Labrador Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean in the east; The Arctic Ocean with the Baffin and Beaufort Seas, the Hudson and Greenland Bays in the north.

Large islands: Aleutian, Greenland, Alexander Archipelago.

The Cordelera mountain system occupies the western part of the mainland; plateau, the Great Plains and medium-high mountains (you can learn more about the mountains) occupy the eastern part of the mainland. To the northeast is the Laurentian Upland. The interior of the mainland is occupied by the Central Plains and the Great Plains. The central part of North America is occupied by the Precambrian North American (Canadian) platform. In the north of the mainland are the mountain rises of Labrador, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Appalachians. The Mexican and Atlantic lowlands are located along the southeast coast.

Deposits of minerals of world importance: combustible gases, oil, potassium salts (in Canada), uranium (Laurentian Upland), coal, nickel, iron ore, gold, cobalt.

The richest oil and gas fields: northern part of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, Mexican lowland, asbestos deposits in the Northern Appalachians. Numerous deposits of rare and non-ferrous metals in the Cordillera.

Climate North America Diverse: from arctic in the far north to tropical in Central America and the West Indies, in the interior - continental, in coastal areas - oceanic.

Average temperatures: January - from -36 °С in the north of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago to -20 °С in the south of Florida and the Mexican Highlands; July - from 4 °С in the north of the Canadian Arctic archipelago to 32 °С in the southwest of the USA.

The largest river system Mississippi-Missouri 6420 km long. Other rivers: Colorado, Mackenzie, Columbia, St. Lawrence, Yukon.

The north of the mainland experienced glaciation, it bored on lakes (more about lakes): Big Bear Lake, Big Lakes, Great Slave Lake, Winnipeg. The total area of modern glaciation is more than 2 million km2.

In the east of the mainland, the land cover is represented by a series of latitudinal zones - from arctic deserts (more about deserts) in the north to tropical evergreen forests in the south (in the Cordillera - a variety of altitudinal belts). South of 47°N sh. zones are located mainly in the meridional direction.

Forests cover about 1/3 of the territory of mainland North America. They are represented by typical taiga in the central regions of Canada, mixed and broad-leaved forests in the Great Lakes basin, coniferous forests on the Pacific coast of Alaska, evergreen mixed and coniferous forests in the southern Cordillera and in the southeast of the mainland.

Semi-desert and steppe vegetation prevails in the interior of the mainland. In the inner belt of the Cordillera, deserts are developed in places. The soil and vegetation cover of North America has been heavily modified by man (this is especially true for the United States).

The fauna includes a number of endemic, typically North American species (bison, muskrat, musk ox, grizzly bear, skunk). There are more than 50 national parks in North America.

Country: Canada, USA (more about the country), Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador, Cuba, Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Grenada, Dominica, Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis. Greenland is a possession of Denmark, as well as a number of possessions that belong to the USA, Great Britain, France (more about the country) and the Netherlands.

This is the continent of North America. Now, having familiarized yourself with everything closer, you can safely choose a place to relax.😉And in order not to miss new articles, subscribe to updates and the article will immediately come to your mail after the release.😉

North America is the third largest among the 6 continents of the planet Earth and is located in the north of the Western Hemisphere. The area of the entire continent, excluding nearby islands, is approximately 20.36 million km2 (with islands 24.25 million km2), which is approximately 14% of the total land area of the planet.

There are 23 states on the territory of the mainland. If you follow the link, you can see a complete list of countries and dependent states on the territory of the North American continent. And the population is approximately 500 million people, which is approximately 7% of the total number of people on planet Earth.

The mainland of North America is washed in the south by the Caribbean Sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in the west the coast of the mainland is washed by the Pacific Ocean, in the north the coast of the mainland is washed by the Arctic Ocean, and in the east the coast of the continent is washed by the Atlantic Ocean.

The length of the continent from north to south is 7326 km, and from west to east about 4700 km. North America and South America are separated by the Isthmus of Panama, and North America and Eurasia by the Bering Strait.

Extreme points of mainland North America

Extreme points of North America, which are located on the mainland:

1) The northernmost point on the mainland is Cape Murchison, which is part of the Kitikmeot region.

2) The westernmost point of the mainland is Cape Prince of Wales, which is located on the Seward Peninsula in Alaska. An interesting fact is that this cape and the extreme continental point in the west of Eurasia (Cape Dezhnev) are separated by a distance of only 86 kilometers.

3) The extreme point of the mainland in the south is Cape Maryato, which is located on the Azuero Peninsula.

4) The extreme eastern point of the continent is Cape St. Charles, which is located on the Labrador Peninsula.

Relief of North America

The central part of the mainland of North America has many mountain ranges, of which the longest can be distinguished - the Cordillera de Talamanca, the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and the Cordillera Isabella. And between these mountain ranges are fertile valleys, where the bulk of the population of Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica lives.

In the east of the continent is the Appalachian mountain system, also on the mainland there are the Rocky and Cascade Mountains, the Cordillera Mountains.

On the territory of the mainland there are the Great Plains - this is a foothill plateau, which is located to the east when viewed from the Rocky Mountains, the Central Plains - plains that are located in the inner part of the mainland, as well as coastal lowlands. The height of the coastal lowlands does not exceed 200 meters, and in the coastal zone they are expressed as lagoons, bars, beaches and spits.

The central part of the mainland is characterized by rather high seismic activity, which is expressed in the form of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

Mount Denali is considered the highest point of the continent (until 2015 it was called McKinley), and the lowest point of the mainland is Death Valley, which is located at a level of 86 meters below sea level.

Climate of North America

The mainland of North America is located in the north in the western hemisphere, thus, the climate on the mainland varies from arctic to subequatorial. At the same time, the coastal regions of the continent have an oceanic climate, while the interior regions of the continent have a continental climate.

Since the mainland stretches from north to south for more than 7000 km, on the continent you can find all types of climate on the planet, except for the equatorial one. It is thanks to this that the animal and plant world of North America is so rich.

If you look at temperatures, then in the northernmost part of the mainland in winter the average temperature is -36 degrees Celsius, and in summer +4 degrees Celsius. At the same time, in the southernmost part of the mainland, the average temperature in winter is +20 degrees Celsius, and in summer +32 degrees Celsius.

The arctic climate is located in the northernmost part of the mainland. It is characterized by very cold winters and the almost complete absence of summer. On the hottest days, temperatures can rise slightly above 0 degrees Celsius.

This is followed by the subarctic zone, which is also characterized by very cold winters, but there is already a short-term summer. Somewhere in June, the snow begins to melt and the weather stays warm for about a month. In summer the temperature can reach up to +16 degrees Celsius. In winter, approximately -24-40 degrees Celsius, winters are very long and cold, the maximum part of precipitation falls in summer.

The temperate zone covers the northern part of the United States and the southern part of Canada. The western part of the mainland in this belt is characterized by cool summers (+8+16 degrees Celsius) and relatively warm winters (0-16 degrees Celsius). In the central part of the mainland of this belt, the climate is very different. It is characterized by warmer summers (+16+24 degrees Celsius) and colder winters (-8-32 degrees Celsius). The eastern part of the mainland in this belt has warm summers (+16+24 degrees Celsius) and warm winters (0-16 degrees Celsius).

The subtropical zone is located in the southern United States and northern Mexico. This zone is characterized by hotter summers and warmer winters. The central part of the mainland, which is located in the subtropical zone, has proven itself to be unfavorable climate conditions. There is a problem of desert growth and climate dryness.

The tropical climate covers the central part of North America. It is characterized by hot summers (+16 to +32°C) and warm winters (+8 to +24°C). There is little rainfall.

The subequatorial belt occupies a small area in the very south of the continent. The climate here is hot. Throughout the year, the air temperature stays above 20 degrees. Precipitation is plentiful and mostly in summer.

Inland waters of North America

The North American continent is rich in both rivers and lakes. The longest river system in North America is the Mississippi River. Its length reaches 3770 kilometers. The largest reserves of fresh water on the mainland are concentrated in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes include five large lakes: Michigan, Superior, Huron, Ontario and Erie (sometimes a sixth lake, St. Clair, is added), the total area of \u200b\u200bwhich is approximately 244,106 kilometers.

All rivers of the mainland North America belong to the basins of the Arctic, Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

The territory of the mainland is irrigated rather unevenly. This is due to several reasons, including climatic and orographic. Most of the mainland's rivers have both transport and hydropower significance.

If you liked this material, share it with your friends on social networks. Thanks!

North America is the continent of the Earth, which is located in the northern part of the Western Hemisphere. The area of the mainland with the islands (Greenland, the West Indies, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Aleutians, etc.) is 24.25 million square meters. km. More than 0.5 billion people live in North America.

On the western side, the continent is washed by the Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea, two bays - Alaska and California. The east coast is washed by the Atlantic Ocean with the seas - the Caribbean, Labrador, the Gulf of Mexico and St. Lawrence. The northern part of the continent is washed by the waters of the Arctic Ocean, the Baffin, Beaufort, Hudson and Greenland bays. The Bering Strait separates two continents - Eurasia and North America. The Isthmus of Panama is a conditional dividing line between North and South America.

The extreme points of the mainland are in the north - Cape Murchison, in the west - Cape Prince of Wales, in the south - Cape Maryato, in the east - Cape St. Charles. From the extreme northern point to the southern point, the mainland occupies 66 °, or more than 7000 km, from the extreme western point to the eastern - 102 °. The largest peninsulas of the mainland are California, Florida, Yucatan, Alaska, Labrador, etc.

The average height of the mainland is 720 m above sea level. At the heart of the continent lies the Canadian platform. In the west, the Cordillera mountain range extends from north to south, where the highest mountain, McKinley, is located. In the eastern part of North America lie large plains, plateaus, uplands, and plateaus. In the central regions are the Great and Central Plains, in the northeast - the Laurentian Upland, in the south there are coastal lowlands with an abundance of lagoons, sandy beaches, flat terraces, spits. Mineral deposits are being developed on the territory of the mainland - nickel, iron ore, cobalt, uranium, gold, oil, coal, natural gas, phosphates, potassium salts.

Climatic zones sequentially from north to south are replaced by arctic temperate and tropical. In the central regions, the continental climate prevails, on the western and eastern shores - oceanic. North of 40-42 ° N. sh. in winter, a thick snow cover forms. Most of Greenland and the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago are covered by ice sheets. In general, the area of glaciation is 2.1 million square meters. km.

The largest river system of the mainland is the Mississippi and Missouri, the length of which is about 6.5 thousand km. Other major rivers are Yukon, St. Lawrence, Mackenzie, Colorado, Columbia.

Natural areas stretch across the latitudes from the Arctic deserts in the northern regions to the tropics with evergreens in the south. Mountain systems are characterized by the presence of altitudinal belts. South of 47°N sh. the zones are distributed mainly in the meridional direction. Forests are located on more than 30% of the mainland. In the central regions of Canada, this is an ordinary taiga, in the Great Lakes region - mixed and deciduous forests, in the southeast - mixed and evergreen coniferous forests. The interior of North America is occupied by steppes and deserts. As a result of human activity over the centuries, the soil and vegetation cover of the mainland has been greatly changed.

The grandiose Cordillera fold belt, 9,000 km long and 1,000 to 1,500 km wide, stretches along the entire western margin of North America from Alaska to Central America. It distinguishes 4 segments: Alaska, Canadian, USA and Mexican and two main longitudinal zones common to all segments - the miogeosynclinal zone of the Rocky Mountains and the eugeosynclinal inner zone. The Rocky Mountain zone is most typically expressed in Canada and the USA. It is underlain by the Early Precambrian sialic basement, which is common with the basement of the adjacent platform. The boundary of this basement extends farthest to the west, in the region of the summit of the Gulf of California in the south and in the Yukon basin in the north. Paleozoic and Mesozoic shelf sediments accumulated directly on this basement in the outer near-platform subzone. In the innermost subzone, where these sediments increase in thickness and become deeper, they are underlain by thick deposits of the Upper Precambrian. At the same time, the Lower (?)- and Middle Riphean formations are possibly the sediments of an intracratonic rift system, while the Upper Riphean-Vendian clastic sediments certainly reflect the beginning of the formation of a riftogenic passive margin. The latter continued to develop in the Cambrian - Middle Devonian. In the late Devonian - early Carboniferous carbonate shelf sedimentation is replaced by clastic sedimentation in the Rocky Mountains. In the US Cordillera, this was due to the thrusting of slope and foot deposits onto the shelf in the era of the so-called. Antlerian orogeny. Later, in the Early Carboniferous, the accumulation of carbonates resumed, but in the deposits of the Middle-Upper Carboniferous and especially the Permian and Triassic, they are interbedded with clastic rocks. In the Permian and Triassic, the western edge of the continent underwent new deformations. Since that time, the existence of a marginal volcanic-plutonic belt of the Andean type has been established in the Cordillera of the USA. Since the Late Jurassic (Nevada tectonic-magmatic epoch), the zone of the Rocky Mountains, starting from the inner edge, has been involved in intense fold-thrust deformations. They extend up to its outer edge at the end of the Cretaceous - the beginning of the Paleogene (Laramian tectonic-magmatic epoch). The entire zone turns into a system of gently sloping tectonic nappes torn from the Early Precambrian basement and displaced for hundreds of kilometers in the direction of the craton. Since the beginning of the Cretaceous, in the Cordillera of the USA, a significant part of the craton itself has been involved in this process, as a result of which the Cordillera belt reaches its maximum width here. In the north of this area, a series of differently oriented basement uplifts arose, separated by deep depressions filled with thick deposits of the Cretaceous - the lower Paleogene, on which these uplifts are thrust. In the southern half of the site, there was a general uplift of a large block that made up the Colorado Plateau and is bounded on the east by the linear uplifts of the Southern Rocky Mountains and the younger Rio Grande Rift. The continuation of the Rocky Mountain zone in Alaska (Brooks Range) and Mexico (eastern Sierra Madre) differs significantly from the main part of the zone in that the Mesozoic miogeosynclinal complex here is sharply unconformably superimposed on the Paleozoic, which belonged to the Arctic belt in Alaska and the Atlantic in Mexico, where this complex begins only in the Upper Jurassic, and with evaporites, which are underlain by continental reds that separate it from the Paleozoic folded basement. In Alaska, the Mesozoic section is entirely marine and terrigenous. A common feature with the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the United States is the Laramian age of the final deformations and a tectonics style with large gentle thrusts north into the Brooks Range and northeast and east into the eastern Sierra Madre. The construction of the Brooks Ridge is accompanied from the north by a large and deep foredeep, the Colville Basin, filled with a thick Small-Cenozoic molasse with intensely deformed southern and gently sloping northern sides. Troughs of the marginal type, but smaller, follow in a discontinuous chain along the eastern edge of the rest of the Cordilleras; these are the Mackenzie and Alberta basins in Canada, the Powder River, Denver and Rayton in the USA, and the Chicontepec in Mexico.

The common characteristic of the Cordillera eugeosynclinal zone is only its predominant oceanic origin, proven by ophiolites, the widest development of other igneous rocks of the calc-alkaline series, and an exceptionally complex internal structure with numerous melange zones, thrusts and strike-slips, formed as a result of deformations that began in the Permian and culminated in chalk. On the whole, the zone is dominated by western (southern in Alaska) vergence and right-sided, sometimes hundreds of kilometers, displacement along strike-slip faults (San Andreas in California and many others). Modern researchers believe that the inner zone of the Cordillera is a "collage", i.e. a mosaic resulting from the "sticking together" of many dozens of large and small blocks of different nature and age, fragments of intra-oceanic uplifts, island arcs, microcontinents that differ sharply in the structure and composition of their sections and do not reveal mutual transitions. Some of them have experienced moving in the north along the edge of the continent for many hundreds and even more than a thousand km. With the end of the main deformations, intermountain troughs filled with Cretaceous and (or) Cenozoic molasses appeared to be superimposed on the fold-thrust structure in places - the Great Valley trough and smaller ones in California, Bowser in Canada, a number of troughs in western Alaska. In the Cordillera of the United States, rifting was widely manifested in the Cenozoic. It created a wide zone of extension and block structure in the center of the system - a zone of Basins and Ranges with a thinned crust and lithosphere, as well as the Rio Grande rift east of the Colorado Plateau, the Gulf of California rift with a transition to oceanic spreading at the end of the Miocene and continuing on the continent . The Cenozoic was also an era of intense volcanism, mainly but not exclusively in the western zone of the Cordilleras. The subduction of the Pacific lithosphere under the continent of North America is associated with the formation of the still active volcanoes of the Aleutian Arc, the Alaska Range, the Cascade Mountains, the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and the older, Oligocene-Miocene calc-alkaline volcanism of the Western Sierra Madre province. The Jurassic-Cretaceous granite batholiths of the Alaska Range, the British Columbia Coast Range, the Sierra Nevada, and the Baja California Peninsula have the same origin. To the east, manifestations of intrusive magmatism of the late Cretaceous - early Paleogene are observed only in the southern half of the Cordillera (USA, Mexico); the plutons are smaller, show slightly increased alkalinity and a greater proportion of crustal material. The last of them go to the platform (Montana, South Dakota). In the rear of the volcanic ridges of the Cascade Mountains, the Columbia Plateau is flooded with basalts, and along the Snake River transverse fault zone, manifestations of bimodal (both basic and felsic) volcanism are observed.

A special place in the structure of North America belongs to the vast, 1500 km in diameter, rounded basin of the Gulf of Mexico. Its central part, occupied by the deep-sea (up to 3750 m) Sigsby Plain, is underlain by oceanic-type crust, which arose, as is assumed, during spreading in the Middle-Late Jurassic, simultaneously with the beginning of the formation of the Atlantic Ocean. Along the periphery of the deep-water basin, a transitional type of crust is developed - a product of the initial rifting of the Late Triassic - Early Jurassic. At the end of the Middle Jurassic, when the waters of the Atlantic penetrated into the basin, a powerful layer of salts was deposited here. The latter is associated with intense manifestations of salt diapirism over most of the basin perimeter, except for the carbonate platforms of Yucatan and Florida, which close the depression in the northeast and southeast. In the Early Cretaceous, a ring of barrier reefs formed around almost the entire basin, and in the Late Cretaceous, deposition of layered carbonates predominated. In the Cenozoic, the periphery of the basin, except for Yucatan and Florida, where carbonate accumulation continued, began to be filled with sandy-argillaceous sediments; their thickness reaches 15 km in the northern part of the basin. At the same time, the growth of salt diapirs continued. The cover of Cretaceous and Cenozoic coastal-shallow sediments, crossing Florida, spreads to the Atlantic Plain of the USA, increasing in thickness towards the ocean; it is practically not deployed. Along the valley of the Mississippi River, this cover forms a "bay" that overlaps the junction of the Appalachians and the Washita and reaches the ancient platform with its top.

In a geographical sense, the Antilles-Caribbean region belongs to North America in the south. Its main elements are the Antilles island arc, convex to the east, the Central American (Panama) isthmus connecting North America with South America, and the Caribbean Sea enclosed between them. The Antilles arc, consisting of three main links (the latitudinal chain of the Greater Antilles in the north, the arc of the Lesser Antilles in the east, and the latitudinal archipelago of the Southern Lesser Antilles in the south), developed from the Jurassic to the Eocene, inclusive, as a volcanic arc, partially laid down on the sialic, partly on a simmatic basis. As a result of intense deformations of the end of the Cretaceous and the end of the Eocene, it acquired a complex folded-cover structure with a general northern vergence, with the participation of ophiolites and with the formation of metamorphogenic dome structures in the south, in the rear. On the northern coast of Cuba, the covers are pushed over the edge of the Florida-Bahama platform with a Precambrian-Paleozoic basement and a Mesozoic and Cenozoic carbonate cover. In the Oligocene-Quaternary, the islands of the Greater Antilles experienced a general (somewhat differentiated in Cuba and Haiti) uplift. The Lesser Antilles for the most part represent a volcanic arc that arose in the Eocene and remains active in the modern era. Part of the islands of the Lesser Antilles has lost this activity and is covered with a cover of Neogene-Quaternary limestones (Limestone Antilles). The Southern Lesser Antilles, like the Greater Antilles, are an ancient (Cretaceous) volcanic arc on a simatic basis. Together with the Coastal Ranges of Venezuela, they are part of the complex of south-vergent fold-cover structures thrust over the northern edge of the South American continent. The Isthmus of Panama south of the Polochik-Motagua strike-slip zone, which opens into the Gulf of Honduras of the Caribbean Sea, consists of two main structural elements - an ancient, Precambrian-Paleozoic massif in the north with a Mesozoic-Cenozoic cover, continuing into the Nicaraguan submarine uplift of the Caribbean Sea, and a young folded -cover structure of the Isthmus of Panama with Jurassic-Early Cretaceous ophiolites at the base of the section and younger island-arc volcanic rocks. The largest deep fault zone passes between the massif and the folded system, along which there is a chain of young volcanoes of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Costa Rica, which, like the Polochik-Motagua shear zone, is distinguished by high seismic activity. The folded system of the Isthmus of Panama took shape only by the beginning of the Pliocene, when a land connection between North America and South America arose.

The Caribbean Sea consists of several deep-sea basins (Yucatan, Colombian, Venezuelan, Grenada). Their formation dates back to the beginning of the Late Cretaceous. The Yucatan depression is separated from the Columbian by the Nicaraguan uplift and the Cayman trench, the Colombian from the Venezuelan by the underwater Beata ridge, extending south from the island of Haiti, and the Venezuelan from the Grenada depression by the underwater Avas ridge (dead volcanic arc). A peculiar young strike-slip-spreading structure is the Cayman Trench, which extends in the latitudinal direction in the east from the top of the Gulf of Honduras to the strait between Cuba and Haiti and articulates here with the Puerto Rico Trench, bordering the eastern segment of the Greater Antilles from the northeast and east and from the north — Lesser Antilles.

seismicity. The main seismically active zone of North America extends along its Pacific coast and is associated with the convergence of the East Pacific and North American lithospheric plates along the seismic focal zones of the Aleutian and Central American trenches, the coast of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon, as well as the San Andreas seismogenic transform fault in California. Devastating earthquakes occurred in this seismically active zone: Alaska (1964), San Francisco (1906), in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles (1971), Mexican (September 1985) and in the extreme south in Managua (1982). It is quite obvious that this entire zone remains highly seismically hazardous in the future, especially its intersection with the latitudinal transform faults of the Pacific Ocean. To the east, in the Cordillera, seismic activity weakens, but does not completely die out: the western, southern and eastern periphery of the Great Basin and the Rio Grande rift are seismic. The platform Terek and the ancient folded structures framing it from the north, east and south are practically aseismic or weakly seismic. The exception is the zone stretching from the estuary of the Syatoy Lawrence River to the Mississippi Delta, which is considered as a zone of ancient and modern rifting. A major earthquake in 1811-12 was associated with it.

Minerageny. In accordance with the peculiarities of the geological structure of North America, four epochs of the formation of mineral deposits are distinguished on its territory: Archean, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, and Mesozoic-Cenozoic.

In the blocks of rocks of the Archean era of the Canadian Shield, deeply metamorphosed ore deposits of the basaltoid and granitoid groups are distinguished. The basaltoid group includes formations of greenstone belts, represented by numerous hydrothermal gold deposits of the Porcupine, Kirkland Lake, and other types, pyrite deposits of the Flin Flon type, and Abitibi ferruginous quartzites. The granitoid group includes the oldest rare-metal and muscovite metamorphogenic pegmatites, known among gray granite domes.

Deposits of ores of ferrous, nonferrous, noble, rare and radioactive metals are associated with the formations of the Proterozoic era of the Canadian Shield. Large deposits of ferruginous quartzites are concentrated in the region of Lake Superior (see Lake Superior iron ore basin). Among the deposits of non-ferrous metal ores in Canada, igneous deposits of sulfide copper-nickel ores, deposits of pyrite-polymetallic ores of Sullivan, as well as deposits of native copper of the Kivino Peninsula, which are very rare in nature, stand out. Deposits of noble metals are represented by high-temperature hydrothermal quartz-gold

South America is the fourth largest continent on the planet. In the east it is washed by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, in the west by the Pacific, and the northern coast belongs to the Caribbean Sea. Let us consider in more detail the extreme points of South America - the wettest continent on the globe.

Geographic coordinates of the extreme points of the mainland South America

The mainland area is 17.7 million square meters. km, but if we count with all the adjacent islands, then this value is slightly higher - 18.28 million square meters. km.

The relief of the continent is very diverse and contrasting. Plateaus, low and high plains predominate in the east, and the Andes mountain ranges in the west. The highest point is Mount Aconcagua - it rises above sea level at 6959 m.

Rice. 1. Aconcagua

If a straight line is drawn along the mainland from the southernmost point to the northern one, then this distance will be 7350 km. The length from the east coast to the west in the widest part of South America will leave a little more than 5 thousand km.

In degrees, the location of the extreme points of the continent is as follows:

Cape Gallinas

The northernmost outlying point of the mainland is located in Colombia at Cape Gallinas, which belongs to the Guajira Peninsula. This point in the north is very arbitrary, since the coastline is distinguished by smooth outlines.

Cape Gallinas is notable for the fact that not far from it there is an ancient settlement of indigenous people - the Wayu Indians. Despite all modern achievements, they continue to live, like their ancestors, observing ancient traditions and rituals.

Cape Forward

On the territory of Chile, on the small peninsula of Brunswick, the extreme southern point of the mainland is located.

For the first time the name of the cape appeared in 1587 and in translation it means “wayward”, “rebellious”. This is how the famous sea pirate Thomas Cavendish christened the cape, and this directly indicates the fact that it was not easy for medieval ships to pass by the cape.

Rice. 2. Cape Forward

In 1987, Cape Froward received its "insignia" - an impressive cross made of metal alloys.

Cape Parinas

In the west, the outlying point of South America is Cape Parinas, which belongs to Peru. It is a coastal ledge on which the lighthouse is located.

Parinhas is a fairly secluded place: the distance to the nearest settlement is more than 5 km. But it is precisely because of this that one can observe seals in their natural habitat, which have chosen the neighboring bay.

Rice. 3. Cape Parinas

Cape Seixas

There was some confusion about the definition of the extreme point in the east. For a long time, geographers were sure that this is Cape Branco, which belongs to Brazil. A lighthouse was even built here as a memorial sign. However, later, in the course of more accurate measurements, it was recorded that the extreme point is located in the neighborhood - it is Cape Seixas.

Average rating: 4.5. Total ratings received: 117.