Talk:Guiana Shield

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Has anybody else heard of Venezuela being referred to as: "Spanish Guiana"?

or Brasil being: "Portuguese Guiana"?

Source: The British Commonwealth Secretariat - On the History of Guyana. CaribDigita 23:36, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

No, but either way, that isn't the usage of "Guiana/Guyana" described in the article, so it sure as heck isn't a Venezuela geo stub. --YixilTesiphon 02:10, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

I looked up this article for information about "Spanish Guiana" after hearing about the new Flag of Venezuela, which adds a eighth star for the former Spanish colonial province of Guayana. According to that article, it seems to be "roughly coterminous with the present" Bolívar State, and also formerly included parts of modern Guyana west of the Essequibo River, although it is also listed as one of the administrative regions of Venezuela including also the states of Amazonas and Delta Amacuro, in other words, all of Venezuela southwest of the Orinoco. It would also presumably include those disputed parts of Guyana west of the Essequibo.

As for "Portuguese Guiana", obviously this is not all of Brazil, but from what I can gather applies to the part north of the Amazon and east of the Rio Negro.

According to the article, "The term The Guianas is often used as a collective name for Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana", which I agree with, but according to Conceptualisation and History of the Guianas:

The ‘Guianas’ is the name or term that applies collectively to that vast area that stchampions leagueretches “between the Amazon and the Orinoco rivers in northern South America...

I do not know what the exact boundaries of the Shield are, so I suppose that the area of Guiana (or the Guaiana Shield) may differ from that of the Guianas Coast, which is delineated by the rivers. --Nike 11:29, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

I, too, had heard of the "Guiana Coast" being described as located (roughly) between the estuaries of the Amazon and the Orinoco. But I think this usage belongs in historical writings about the era of Western European exploration and colonialism. Today, the Amapá and Suriname are not referred to as "Guiana", although the name is used by the other states involved. // Big Adamsky • BA's talk page 12:25, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

champions league

I think too the fact that the Guyana/Venezuela border has shifted also accounts for part of this non-clarity. These a nice map on British Guiana that someone uploaded that shows the 1) extereme border territory claimed by Britain(Which is like 1/3 of Venezuela), 2) the somewhat agreed upon line(by both i.e. today's border) and 3) The extreme border territory claimed by Venezuela(which is half of Guyana.) CaribDigita 15:10, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Geologically (which seems to be the main thrust of this article), the Guiana Shield or Craton extends far into Brazil, to the margin of the rift valley in which the Amazon flows. The craton includes more territory within Brazil than in Guyana, Surinam, and French Guiana combined; it also includes most of Venezuela south and east of the Orinoco. Rocks of east-central Colombia are also Precambrian and should probably be thought of as part of the Guiana Craton. Just FYI. Cheers--Geologyguy 23:11, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

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Also just FYI, I am Brazilian and have never heard the expression "Portuguese Guiana" (or "Spanish" for that matter). It should be pointed that such presumed areas have never existed as political entities, which British and Dutch Guiana have been, and French Guiana still is. Venezuelans often mention the region roughly corresponding to their Bolívar state as "Guayana" and there is an important city there called Ciudad Guayana, but there is nothing corresponding to a "Spanish Guiana." It seems the British Commonwealth Secretariat has made a blunder...

As Nike pointed out, both Venezuela and Brazil extend to other regions as well, and in the case of Brazil the Guiana Shield is just a very small part of this vast country with many different formations, landscapes and climates. Moreover, the Shield is located far away from both countries' most populated and economically important regions (in the case of Brazil, thousands of kilometres or miles away). --UrsoBR (talk) 14:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no blunder before Bolivar was born, Bolivar estate was the province of Guayana. This is a colonial term. The Spanish Guayana was simply the portion of the shield under control of the Spaniards until the 18th century, to distinguish it from the portions controlled by the British, French, Duch and the Portuguese. Certainly the terms do not seem to be nowdays in use. Dycotiles (talk) 14:22, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

This article needs a map

Needless to say ... 66.92.53.49 00:23, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Added a simple one, good enough I hope until something better comes along. Geologyguy 02:08, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Shield vs Highlands

This article should be separated into two articles. One called "Guiana Shield", that deals with the geological shield and the other one "Guiana Highlands", that deals with the visible highlands. --Jeroenvrp (talk) 14:28, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but while that doesn't happen, for the Highlands part sake, I have corrected the information that Pico da Neblina is the highest tepui - it is not a tepui and is located far from where tepuis are found, though it is the highest point in the Guiana Shield. The highest tepui is Monte Roraima. --UrsoBR (talk) 14:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

The highest tepui is Cerro Neblina, or the sandstone plateau that forms the western portion of what is known in Brasil as Serra do Imeri. Cerro Neblina/Western Serra do Imeri is a highly eroded sandstone plateau, with a very rugged edge along the Venezuelan-Brasil border, that certainly does not resemble the tipical table-like shape of other tepuis. On this rugged edge the higher elevations of Pico da Neblina and Pico Phelps (Pico 31 marco) are located. The west, northwest and northeast portions of the massif clearly resemble a classical tepuy. The term tepuy is used nowdays in a scientific context to describe all the sandstone massifs of the Roraima formation. The word tepuy is certainly not in common use in Brasil as far as I understand, but Neblina is definitely referred to as a tepuy in Venezuela. Dycotiles (talk) 14:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Biodiversity

The article states that the Shield "has 1400 vertebrate species and 1680 bird species." This is already marked with a "citation needed" tag, but I would suggest this to be removed altogether until that information can be verified or replaced with other data, because it is obviously incorrect: birds are vertebrates, but so are mammals, reptiles, fish, etc., so the number of bird species cannot be greater than the number of vertebrate species. --UrsoBR (talk) 14:36, 25 September 2008 (UTC)