Locations
Yves Tardy, from the French Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, calculated that laterites cover about one-third of the Earth's continental land area. Lateritic soils are the subsoils of the equatorial forests, of the savannas of the humid tropical regions, and of the Sahelian steppes. They cover most of the land area between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn; areas not covered within these latitudes include the extreme western portion of South America, the southwestern portion of Africa, the desert regions of north-central Africa, the Arabian peninsula and the interior of Australia.
Some of the oldest and most highly deformed ultramafic rocks which underwent laterization are found in the complex Precambrian shields in Brazil and Australia. Smaller highly deformed Alpine-type intrusives have formed laterite profiles in Guatemala, Colombia, Central Europe, India and Burma. Large thrust sheets of Mesozoic to Tertiary 251- to 65-million-year-old island arcs and continental collision zones underwent laterization in New Caledonia, Cuba, Indonesia and the Philippines. Laterites reflect past weathering conditions; laterites which are found in present-day non-tropical areas are products of former geological epochs, when that area was near the equator. Present-day laterite occurring outside the humid tropics are considered to be indicators of climatic change, continental drift or a combination of both.
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