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Amazonian Reptiles
An exaggerated tale of the reptiles of the Upper Amazon. Excepted from the introduction of "The Rivers Ran
East," published in 1953.
"I respectfully differ with Clark on the length of
the anaconda snake. The one he measured on the Morona River was 26 feet 8 and one-half inches. That is much too
conservative. The Peruvian skin traders who bring thousands a year to Iquitos tell me that anacondas quite often
measure up to forty feet. The Englishman, Colonel P. H. Fawcett, (who was lost while searching for a ruined city
he believed to be Atlantis) once killed an anaconda that measured at sixty-five feet. In the Beni Swamps of Madre
de Dios, Fawcett saw snake tracks which led him to estimate their length up to eighty feet. In the Beni also, the
Colonel saw an animal he believed might be Diplodocus, the eighty-foot reptile of twenty-five tons. This animal
he though might still be in existence as it was an eater of aquatic plants. which grow profusely in this region.
The Diplodocus story is confirmed by many of the tribes east of the Ucayali, a region covered by Clark (Clark 1953)."
"Rainforest" is used interchangeably with "rain forest" on this site. Same for "rainforests" and "rain forests". "Jungle" is generally not used.
Recent news
Amazon deforestation rate falls to lowest on record (8/10/2007) Deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon for the previous year were the lowest on record, according to preliminary figures released by INPE, Brazil's National Institute of Space Research.
Lowland rainforest less diverse than previously thought (8/9/2007) While rainforests are the world's libraries of biodiversity, species richness may be more evenly distributed in some forests than in others, reports an extensive new study by an international team of entomologists and botanists. The work, published in the current issue of the journal Nature, has important implications for forest management and conservation strategies.
Experts: parks effectively protect rainforest in Peru (8/9/2007) High-resolution satellite monitoring of the Amazon rainforest in Peru shows that land-use and conservation policies have had a measurable impact on deforestation rates. The research is published in the August 9, 2007, on-line edition of Science Express.
