The geology and mineral resources of the Bolivian precambrian shield / Геология и полезные ископаемые боливийского докембрийского щита

This memoir reports on the geology and mineral resources of about 220 000 km2 of ground, roughly the size of the island of Great Britain, constituting almost the sum total of what is loosely called here the ‘Bolivian shield’: that part of the Precambrian Brazilian Shield lying in Bolivia (Figure 1). The area lies in the Bolivian departments of Santa Cruz and Beni and is bounded to the north and east by Brazil.
The region constitutes a large part of the ‘unknown’ Bolivia, sparsely populated and difficult of access, which swelters under a tropical forest, and contrasts with the picturesque snow-capped Andes of the tourist brochures. Since the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 the region has been a lawless outback for explorers and exploiters. It is the country of Colonel Fawcett who, on missions to map Bolivia’s frontiers, wandered around the river systems witnessing,amongst other things, the human sufferings of the ‘rubber boom’. He penetrated the ‘poisoned hell’ of the Rio Verde in exploring Serranfa Haunchaca, describing the scenery to Arthur Conan Doyle from whose vivid imagination came the novel of the Lost World in which man confronted evolution-locked prehistoric monsters.
It is to this area then, that the first Project brigades set out from Santa Cruz de la Sierra in 1976, and whence the last returned, mission completed, in 1982.<...>