Area that will becomthe Guiana ShieldeGuiana ShieldcoastlineModernUpliftAFRICASOUTH AMERICASOUTH
AMERICANORTH
AMERICA A F R
I C
AMOUNTRORAIMAHIGHLANDSGUIANAGUIANA
HIGHLANDSGUIANA
HIGHLANDS
Auyán-tepuíChimantáMassifCerro Guaiquinima
NHonnold, who famously
climbed Yosemite’s
El Capitan without
ropes, joined the expe-
dition to help the
team scale Weiassipu’s
quartzite face. “Some
of the best rock I’ve
ever climbed,” he says.
It’s extremely old rock
formed on the bed of
a primordial sea some
Sands deposited thousands of feet thick over the Earth’s crust 1.7 billion years ago.
cemented into hard sedimentary
rock called quartz sandstone.
Wa large area in South Amhen continental plates divided, erica was
elevated, fractured, and incised
with deep canyons.
Rainfall over millions of
years released sand parti-
cles from the original stone,
hewing sheer cliff walls.
Today’s tepuis are the remaining
fragments of the Guiana Shield.
They’ve kept much of their current
shape for the past 40 million years.
DWINDLING PLATEAU
Tepuis are carved from a seabed formed about 1.7 billion years ago. The
movement of continental plates transformed the seabed, leaving a large
plateau that eventually eroded into roughly a hundred individual summits.
1.6 -1.8
160-70
MILLION
YEARS AGO
MILLION
YEARS AGOMILLION
YEARS AGOBILLION
YEARS AGO70-40
40
STONE ORIGINSSEPARATION
STAGEWEATHERING
AWAYHARD
HOLDOUTS