The Late Cenozoic of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego

MASSAFERRO, J, ASHWORTH, A. & S. BROOKS

Quaternary Fossil Insects from South America

Elsevier

Año: 2008; p. 343 - 409

Patagonia is the region of Argentina and Chile that extends from 39°S to 55°S. In the last twenty years Patagonia has become increasingly important in paleoclimatic research due to its exceptional geographic location between South Pacific, Atlantic and Antarctic oceans and the abundance of lakes and bogs from which climate indicators can be easily obtained. The Andean region of Patagonia is ideal for monitoring Late Quaternary climate at mid-latitudes because it is one of the few areas sustaining a suite of rainforest communities along altitudinal and latitudinal gradients within the belt of the southern westerlies (Moreno, 1997; Whitlock et al., 2001). Such a location is key for investigations related to the reorganisation of climate during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene, especially for testing the synchroneity of climate changes in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Patagonia is also a key place for the study of interannual and decadal climate variations such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), that affect the Pacific Ocean to leave palaeoecological evidence in lake records. Furthermore, Patagonia also provides evidence of past climate changes from regions located in the same latitude and climate as those in the Northern Hemisphere climate has been extensively studied (Denton, 1999). Finally, neo-ecological work developed in this part of South America has emphasised the strong need for the study of catastrophic disturbances such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, insect outbreaks, windstorms and fires, that affected flora and fauna in Patagonian rainforest in the past (Szeicz et al., 2003).