Guiana Shield

The Guiana Shield is a 1.7-billion-year-old Precambrian craton of the South American plate, forming a broad section of the continent's northern coast beneath Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana along with substantial parts of southern Venezuela, Brazil north of the Amazon and eastern Colombia. Its rock is built of metasediment and metavolcanic basement overlain by nearly horizontal beds of sandstone, quartzite, shale and conglomerate, cut through by younger mafic intrusions such as gabbro. Where the shield rises highest it forms the Guiana Highlands, home to the flat-topped tepui mountains and to some of the world's most famous waterfalls, including Angel Falls, Kaieteur Falls and Cuquenan Falls, with Brazil's Pico da Neblina, at 2,995 meters, its highest point overall. The shield's forests are among the most biodiverse on Earth, holding thousands of endemic plants and animals. This entity documents the Guiana Shield specifically as a geological formation, the craton itself, distinct from the Guianas as a political and cultural region of the same name.