The Magallanes Region, officially the Magallanes y la Antártica Chilena Region, is one of Chile's 16 first order administrative divisions. It is the southernmost, largest, and second least populated region of Chile. It comprises four provinces: Última Esperanza, Magallanes, Tierra del Fuego, and Antártica Chilena.
Puerto Natales is a city in Chilean Patagonia. It is the capital of both the commune of Natales and the province of Última Esperanza, one of the four provinces that make up the Magallanes and Antartica Chilena Region in the southernmost part of Chile. Puerto Natales is the only city in the province. It is located 247 km (153 mi) northwest of Punta Arenas. It is the final passenger port of call for the Navimag ferry sailing from Puerto Montt into the Señoret Channel as well as the primary transit point for travellers to Torres del Paine National Park, Chile.
Última Esperanza is one of four provinces in the southern Chilean region of Magallanes and Antártica Chilena. The capital is Puerto Natales and it is named after Última Esperanza Sound. A section of its border with Argentina in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field is under dispute.
The Cordillera Riesco is a mountain range located in the Chilean Patagonia to the west of Puerto Natales. It extends in north–south direction on the eastern shore of the Fjord of the Mountains and parallel to the Cordillera Sarmiento. The rock towers of the "Grupo La Paz" are the centerpiece of this mountain range. The range includes the Cerro Toro formation, within which the Cueva del Milodon Natural Monument is situated; this monument comprises a cave complex where remains of the extinct Giant sloth have been recovered along with evidence of occupation by prehistoric man.
Cueva del Milodón Natural Monument is a Natural Monument located in the Chilean Patagonia, 24 km (15 mi) northwest of Puerto Natales and 270 km (168 mi) north of Punta Arenas.
Cerro Benítez is a mountain in the Patagonian region of Chile. In a larger context this feature is an element of the Cerro Toro geological complex. The Cueva del Milodón Natural Monument is situated on the southern flank of Cerro Benítez. The Cerro Benítez is a location for sighting of the Andean condor.
Eberhard Fjord is an arm of Seno Ultima Esperanza in the Patagonian region of Chile. This surface water body was named after Hermann Eberhard, the first European to explore this region. Eberhard used the fjord to find the Cueva del Milodón, where he discovered remains of the extinct Giant sloth; archaeological recovery of evidence of prehistoric man was also found at this cave complex. Geologically this fjord is within the Magallanes Basin.
The Señoret Channel is a navigable surface water body in the Patagonian region of Chile. One of the major towns along the channel is Puerto Natales. Hermann Eberhard, the first European to explore the interior of northern Patagonia, used the Señoret Channel to navigate northward in order to access the remote portions of this region. One of his findings was the Milodon Cave at the base of the Cerro Benitez, where he recovered remains of the extinct Giant sloth and evidence of habitation of early man from 10,000 BC.
The Magallanes Basin or Austral Basin is a major sedimentary basin in southern Patagonia. The basin covers a surface of about 170,000 to 200,000 square kilometres and has a NNW-SSE oriented shape. The basin is bounded to the west by the Andes mountains and is separated from the Malvinas Basin to the east by the Río Chico-Dungeness High. The basin evolved from being an extensional back-arc basin in the Mesozoic to being a compressional foreland basin in the Cenozoic. Rocks within the basin are Jurassic in age and include the Cerro Toro Formation. Three ages of the SALMA classification are defined in the basin; the Early Miocene Santacrucian from the Santa Cruz Formation and Friasian from the Río Frías Formation and the Pleistocene Ensenadan from the La Ensenada Formation.
Porteño Lake is a lake in Chilean Patagonia. Current scientific analysis indicates this surface water body was considerably more extensive in the early Holocene.
The Andean orogeny is an ongoing process of orogeny that began in the Early Jurassic and is responsible for the rise of the Andes mountains. The orogeny is driven by a reactivation of a long-lived subduction system along the western margin of South America. On a continental scale the Cretaceous and Oligocene were periods of re-arrangements in the orogeny. The details of the orogeny vary depending on the segment and the geological period considered.
The Mata Amarilla Formation is a fossiliferous formation of the Austral Basin in southern Patagonia, Argentina. The formation consists of sediments deposited during the Middle Cenomanian, dated to 96.94 to 95.52 Ma. The middle section of the formation was previously considered to be the Pari Aike Formation.
The Arauco Basin is a sediment-filled depression –a sedimentary basin– in south-central Chile. In the context of plate tectonics it is classified as a forearc basin. The basin has an approximate area of 8,000 square kilometres (3,100 sq mi) and at its deeper parts the surface of its sedimentary fill reaches 200 metres (660 ft) below sea-level. The basin is interpreted as being part of an uplifted part of the continental shelf. To the west it bounds an active accretionary prism that lies next to the Chile trench and to the east it bounds metamorphic basement representing a fossil Paleozoic accretionary complex that has been intruded by the Coastal Batholith of central Chile.
Tobífera Formation is a volcano-sedimentary formation of Middle to Late Jurassic age. The formation is crops out in the Magallanes Region in southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego of Chile, the Santa Cruz Province of southern Argentina, and in the subsurface of the Malvinas Basin offshore Argentina and the Falkland Islands.
Zapata Formation is a sedimentary formation of Lower Cretaceous age in the Magallanes or Austral Basin of Argentina and Chile. Much of the formation is folded and faulted as consequence of the Andean orogeny. In outcrops of the Zapata Formation near Torres del Paine, the southernmost fossil of the ichthyosaur genus Platypterygius has been found.
Patagonia comprises the southernmost region of South America, portions of which lie on either side of the Argentina-Chile border. It has traditionally been described as the region south of the Rio Colorado, although the physiographic border has more recently been moved southward to the Huincul fault. The region's geologic border to the north is composed of the Rio de la Plata craton and several accreted terranes comprising the La Pampa province. The underlying basement rocks of the Patagonian region can be subdivided into two large massifs: the North Patagonian Massif and the Deseado Massif. These massifs are surrounded by sedimentary basins formed in the Mesozoic that underwent subsequent deformation during the Andean orogeny. Patagonia is known for its vast earthquakes and the damage they cause.
The Dorotea Formation is a geological formation in the Río de Las Chinas Valley of the Magallanes Basin in Patagonian Chile whose strata date back to the Campanian to Maastrichtian of the Late Cretaceous.
Los Adobes Formation is an Early Cretaceous (Aptian) geologic formation in Chubut Province, in the Cañadón Asfalto Basin of central Patagonia, Argentina. The formation belongs to the Chubut Group and represents the Early Cretaceous K1 megasequence in the basin, unconformably overlying the Late Jurassic Cañadón Calcáreo Formation and is overlain by the Albian Cerro Barcino Formation.
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