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Home to marsupials, monkeys and the world's largest rainforest, South America is the continent with everything - from glaciers to deserts. It became a continent in its own right on breaking away from Africa and Antarctica 120 million years ago. Its fauna and flora are therefore descended from organisms either on the continent then (marsupials, for instance) or that managed to make their way there during its isolation, New World monkeys for example, whose ancestors crossed the early Atlantic Ocean from Africa. Three million years ago, the Isthmus of Panama formed, uniting North and South America and allowing animals including big cats, bears, coral snakes and condors to move in.
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Mountain camels
Guanacos and vicunas have to cope with the extreme cold of the Andes.
Guanacos and vicunas have to cope with the extreme cold of the Andes.
Amazon source
Torrent ducks dabble in the vital fresh water that runs from Peru's moors.
Torrent ducks dabble in the vital fresh water that runs from Peru's moors.
Pantanal life
Timing is everything in the Pantanal, the world's largest wetland.
The wetland is in a constant flux between flooding in the wet season and drying out in the summer heat that leaves only a narrow band of time when the water is clear enough to film. Go too close to the end of the rainy season and the flooded water is still too stirred up, go too late and the water levels have dropped too far down.
Kukenon tepuis aerials
Time-lapse techniques show the erosive power of rain as it sculpts this surreal landscape.
A digital SLR recorded stills of the cloud movements every 4-8 seconds using an intervalometer. Played out as a sequence, these are much higher resolution images than even the high definition camera in time-lapse mode could produce. The large format of a 35mm camera gives the panning time-lapse of the rainstorm a cinematic quality.
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