The Eastern Ghats are a discontinuous range of mountains along India’s eastern coast. The Eastern Ghats run from West Bengal state in the north, through Odisha and Andhra Pradesh to Tamil Nadu in the south passing some parts of Karnataka. They are eroded and cut through by the four major rivers of peninsular India, known as the Godavari, Mahanadi, Krishna, and Kaveri.
The Eastern Ghats are older than the Western Ghats, and have a complex geological history related to the assembly and breakup of the ancient supercontinent of Rodinia and the assembly of the Gondwana supercontinent. The Eastern Ghats are made up of charnockites, granite gneiss, khondalites, metamorphic gneisses and quartzite rock formations.
The southern tropical thorn scrub type forests consist of open, low vegetation that is characterised by thorny trees with short trunks and low, branching crowns that rarely meet to form a closed canopy.
The endemic fauna of the Eastern Ghats are Jerdon’s courser (Rhinoptilus bitorquatus) and grey slender loris (Loris lydekkerianus). The rare geckos found here are Indian golden gecko (Calodactylodes aureus), rock gecko (Hemiphyllodactylus aurantiacus), and Sharma’s skink Eutropis nagarjuni.
Picture Credit : Google