What are Some Extinct Animals of South America?
For approximately 20 million years, between 23 and 3 million years ago, South America was an island continent, with its own unique fauna. The starting point for this diversification was inherited from the supercontinent Gondwana, which consisted of South America attached to Antarctica (which was forested at the time) and Australia for about 150 million years. This unique Gondwanan fauna included numerous marsupials (now divided between Australia and South America), including carnivorous marsupials, ratites (represented today by the rhea, emu, and ostrich), a diverse avian fauna, and unique plants, including many cycads (considered living fossils) and family Proteaceae, with beautiful pink and white flowers. Many of these are not extinct animals or plants, but large numbers of their relatives have gone extinct in the last few million years.
