A map of South America shows the Atacama Desert, which spans about 600 miles (966 kilometers) in northern Chile—including historically controversial borderlands between Chile and Peru—and eastward into Bolivia and Argentina.

The Atacama's latitude has remained stable over millennia, staying in the Southern Hemisphere's dry subtropical climate belt since the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago.

All of today's penguin species live in the Southern Hemisphere, with Peru housing the northernmost modern species, Spheniscus humboldti.

—Anne Minard

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