A few times a year a polar air mass crosses the South American continent and drops Amazon temperatures by as much as 15 °C in a matter of hours. Brazilians call it the friagem, and it ties Antarctica directly to the largest tropical forest on Earth.
Textbook oceanography said reefs could not exist there. Beneath the Amazon’s sediment plume lies a reef system of more than 9,500 square kilometres, and oil drilling licences are being sought nearby.
The seed of Bertholletia excelsa holds more selenium than any other natural food. A single nut a day is enough, and more than five habitually raises a red flag.
Beneath the forest of southeastern Pará lies the planet’s largest set of caves formed in iron rock. Inside there are megafauna fossils, eyeless fish, rock paintings and an unresolved dilemma with iron mining.
Manaus carries the name of the Manaó, Rio Negro navigators who resisted colonisation under Ajuricaba. Their legacy still shapes the identity of the largest city in the Amazon.
The woodpecker strikes a trunk twenty times a second and absorbs 1,200 g without a concussion. How its skull works and what engineers take from it.
The Amazon’s foul smelling forest guardian is a figure of oral tradition, not an animal on any scientific record. An unconfirmed hypothesis suggests the story may hold the memory of extinct giant ground sloths.
Airborne laser scanning revealed monumental mounds, ceremonial platforms and thousands of kilometers of straight causeways beneath the Amazon canopy, rewriting the history of pre-Columbian engineering.
Just downstream from Manaus, the Rio Negro and the Solimões run side by side for kilometres without mixing. Temperature, current speed and density draw one of the sharpest liquid borders on Earth, and two different biological worlds live on either side of it.
Beneath the leaf litter, tiny fauna and microorganisms run an ecosystem of their own that decides how well the Amazon withstands drought, heat and fire.
