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Location Overview
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| South America, the fourth largest of the earth's seven continents (after Asia, Africa, and North America), occupying about 17,819,100 sq km (about 6,880,000 sq mi), or about 12 percent of the earth's land surface. It lies astride the equator and tropic of Capricorn and is joined by the Isthmus of Panama, on the north, to Central and North America. The continent extends about 7400 km (about 4600 mi) from the Caribbean Sea on the north to Cape Horn on the south, and its maximum width, between Cabo de São Roque, on the Atlantic Ocean, and Punta de Pariñas, on the Pacific Ocean, is about 4830 km (about 3000 mi). South America has a 1993 estimated population of 310 million, less than 6 percent of the world's people. The continent comprises 12 nations. Ten of the countries are Latin: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Two of the nations are former dependencies: Guyana, of Great Britain, and Suriname, of the Netherlands. South America also includes French Guiana, an overseas department of France. Located at great distances from the continent in the Pacific Ocean are several territories of South American republics: the Juan Fernández Islands and Easter Island (Chile) and the Galápagos Islands (Ecuador). Nearer the coast, in the Atlantic Ocean, is the Fernando de Noronha Archipelago, which is a Brazilian territory, and, farther south, the British dependency of the Falkland Islands, which is claimed by Argentina as the Islas Malvinas. The coastline of
South America is relatively regular except in the extreme south and southwest, where it is indented by numerous fjords. |
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