features and in sediments. Neither the rain forests in Amazonia nor the salars and lakes on the tropical-subtropical altiplano looked in the past 10.000 to 20.000 years, even less in the past 1 or 2 million years, as they look today. In course of global
climate changes (such as ice ages) the rain forests shrank, savannahs expanded and deserts existed where dense vegetation dominates today. Or big lake sand long glaciers existed in today´s desert like central Andean valleys. Apart from temperature changes