Page 95 - Atlas Of The World's Strangest Animals

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North America

North America is the world’s third-largest continent, covering

approximately 24,709,000 square kilometres (9,540,200 square miles)
and providing a home for around 529 million people.

his enormous expanse of land stretches from the on a monumental scale – vast peaks, colossal canyons,
sandy deserts of North America to deserts of towering waterfalls, rivers, plains, deserts and ice-sheets
Tquite a different kind in the continent’s icy Arctic that stretched as far as the eye could see. And inhabiting
extremes.Traditionally, Mexico and Central America are this strange new land were people who were every bit
considered to be part of this great continent too, but for as fascinating as the place they called home.
clarity, these will be included in the following chapter. Today, it’s easy to imagine that cities and ranches,
Here, we focus on the land of the north – part of what roads and dams have ‘tamed’ this once wild continent.
European settlers dubbed the New World. But nature endures and, where she does, the region’s
And is it any wonder that they chose such an biggest, baddest, wildest and strangest animals can still
evocative epithet? For people who were used to life in be found. From the Arctic Circle to the Gulf of
Europe’s compact towns and family farms, this wild and Mexico, from bee-sized birds to flying mammals, the
wonderful continent must have looked like an giant’s North American experience is one full of the strange
playground. Everywhere they went, they found nature and the unexpected.

(c) 2011 Marshall Cavendish. All Rights Reserved.