The river Amazon, not the Nile, is the world's longest river, claims a group of Brazilian scientists.
Scientists from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics have recently traced the Amazon's source to a snow-capped mountain in southern Peru.
The Amazon, though the world's largest river by volume, is believed to be slightly shorter than Africa's river Nile. But with this 'discovery', the length of the Amazon extends by 284 km. This means, the Amazon now stretches up to 6,800 km--105 km longer than the Nile. The two rivers have been at the centre of a centuries-old debate for the "world's longest" title. Determining the length of the Amazon, by choosing its end point with precision, is tricky because of the river's wide mouth.
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