The white is chemistry — silicon dioxide crystallized from ancient sediment.

And between and around them, the evolution of the past tens of millions of years has placed organisms that exist nowhere else in the world.

The Angle Of Geological Understanding

It is worth spending time with the specific geological story of the Guiana Shield more directly, because the geology is not simply a backdrop to the biological story — it is the cause of everything else.

The Guiana Shield is one of the cratons — ancient, stable pieces of continental crust — that forms the deep geological foundation of the South American continent.