Nuevo Mundo volcano

The Nuevo Mundo volcano or Jatun Mundo Quri Warani (Quechua hatun, jatun big, large, Spanish mundo world, Aymara and Quechua quri gold, precious metal, Aymara wara scepter, -ni a suffix to indicate ownership (warani the one with a scepter), Quechua warani constellation,^[2][3] hispanicized spellings Jatun Mundo Khori Huarani, Jatun Mundo Khorihuarani)^[4] is a stratovolcano, lava dome and a lava flow complex between Potosí and Uyuni, Bolivia, in the Andes rising to a peak at 5,438 metres (17,841 ft). It is located in the Potosí Department, Antonio Quijarro Province, Tomave Municipality.^[5] It lies north-east of the mountains Uyuni and Kuntur Chukuña, north of the mountain Chuqi Warani (Choque Huarani) and south of the Sirk'i.

History

The first mountaineering in the area was before 1903, by a Frenchman, Georges Courty, whose notes led to the mysterious entry in the 1987 book Mountaineering in the Andes by Jill Neate, “Nuevo Mundo, 6020 m, location uncertain.”^[6]

The German geologist Frederic Ahlfeld, an avid mountaineer, moved to Bolivia in 1924. He began exploring the mountains in Potosí Department after World War II, climbing a number of the peaks. In a letter to the historian and mountaineer Evelio Echevarría in 1962, Ahlfeld stated that because of the supposed height of Nuevo Mundo one of the two Cerro Lípez peaks might be a possible candidate for Monsieur Courty’s mysterious mountain.^[7] However, in 1969, in Ahlfeld's book Geografia Fisica de Bolivia,^[8] Ahlfeld presented a drawing^[9] of a Nuevo Mundo (5438 m.) with its description,^[10] and at a location southwest of Potosí and just north of the small village Potoco, far away from Cerro Lípez.

At the end of the 1990s, Toto Aramayo, Yossi Brain and Dakin Cook undertook the search for Nuevo Mundo, and they found Ahlfeld’s Nuevo Mundo at Latitude:19°47'0"S, Longitude: 66°29'0"W.^[7] The Bolivian government and the USGS recognize this as the correct identification of Nuevo Mundo, although some maps^[11] still as of 2013 labeled Cerro Lípez as Nuevo Mundo.

Geology

Nuevo Mundo is a complex eruption center on the edge of the Los Frailes Plateau with a stratovolcano which is capped by cinder cones (mostly of ash and pumice).^[12] At the base level there are two lava flows (of a viscous dacite) that erupted along a north-south fault. Apparently at the same time there were block-and-ash flows to the east.^[1] Later a highly explosive Plinian eruption produced an ash fall that extended over 200 km to the east, as far as Potosí. This eruption was quite recent, but it predated the arrival of the Spanish in 1533. While earlier eruption centers, such as the Khari Khari caldera, Wila Qullu, Kuntur Nasa, Cerro Villacolo, Cerro Wanapa Pampa created the Los Frailes Plateau, Nuevo Mundo overlaid those Los Frailes plateau deposits in the Holocene with huge ignimbrite deposits, which are mostly pyroclastic dacite and andesite.^[13][14]

See also

• List of volcanoes in Bolivia

Notes