Geography
As mentioned above, the Gran Sabana is a park with unique characteristics. The beauty of the landscape is accentuated in the Guiana Shield, the oldest geological formation on earth. It consists of two main geological formations, an igneous metamorphic age of approximately 2,000 million years and a layer of sedimentary rocks, sandstones of the Roraima formation, deposited about 1,700 million years. These sandstones sedimented in a lake or ocean, reaching thicknesses of several kilometers. The rocks were originally united in one or more plates with some linearity, but were fractured and eroded over hundreds of millions of years. During these eras were alternated humid and warm climates. This region was subjected to several periods of uplift and subsidence tectonics, and because of this, certain areas of the shield were more prone to erosion than others. This determined the presence of large sandstone beds are isolated, called "tepuis" in the language of the indigenous inhabitants of the region. The relief of the region is slightly wavy. The average height is about a thousand feet high, but it can vary considerably over short distances: the road of El Dorado to Santa Elena de Uairén is of 200 meters to 1,500 in less than 30 km, in a place called "La Escalera", a raise with a paved street. Its condition of savanna is not due to climate (which is enough rain to support a forest vegetation), but the formation of rocky and sandy soils, although parts of the jungle can be seen in some depressions and, above all, forests gallery along the rivers.
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