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The
Divisadero Largo reservation includes 492 hectares, and
is located in the foothills of the Pre-ridge of
the Andes, 8 kilometres west of the city of Mendoza,
between the departments of Capital and Las Heras. It was
declared a Protected Area in 1983. Its name refers to
Cerro Divisadero, from which the natives would watch the
transit of herds of guanacos and other animals in order
to hunt them.
The main purpose of creation of this park was the
presence of sedimentary outcrops with fossils formed
during a period of more than 200 million years.
The park rangers’ base is called Atala, name of the mine
where coal used to be mined at the beginning of the 20th
century.
The reservation has unique geological features, which
give it a great beauty and a high value both scientific
and educational. The presence of a geological fault
(fracture) and its movement have allowed the outcrop of
different levels of sedimentary rocks representing an
interval of time greater than 200 million years.
Divisadero Largo invites us to make a trip back in time,
to make contact with the very old history of our region.
The evidence of diverse environments and fossils of
animals and plants that lived there in the past, perhaps,
will help us not only to capture the intense dynamics
and diversity of our planet, but also to establish a
closer relationship with the environment that surrounds
us.
The rocks in the area are part of the so-called "Cuyo
Basin," which in the past was a huge depressed centre
that favoured the accumulation of sediments. These
conditions occurred from the Triassic period, more than
200 million years (age when dinosaurs first appeared)
and continued with various intensities until mid-Tertiary
period (about 200 million years ago) when the dinosaurs
had disappeared and the mammals were dominating the surface
of the Earth.
All of these materials were formed under continental
environments: rivers, lakes, lagoons, estuaries, saline
environments, and alluvial fans were alternately
occupying the region and left over the time huge volumes
of sediments. Finally, the Pre-ridge contributed
with a lot of material covering the ancient formations,
after the elevation of the Andes Mountains, in the
Quaternary period (covering the past 2 million years).
The current flora and fauna of the foothills ecosystem
are extremely diverse. The explanation lies in the fact
that this region is a biome, namely, the boundary
between two ecosystems or bio geographic regions, one
typical of the plain (Monte) and the other from the
mountain itself (Prepuna).
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