The Atlantic Forest also known as the Mata Atlântica is located in the Atlantic coast of Brazil where you can find a wide mix of forests namely the tropical and subtropical moist forest, tropical savanna, the tropical dry forest, the so called semi deciduous forest as well as mangrove forests. They extend towards the Brazilian Atlantic coast of Rio Grande do Norte to that of Rio Grande do Sul and include the inland near Paraguay and towards the Misiones Province of Argentina as well.
The Atlantic Forest is cut off from the chief rainforests present in South America and has diverse vegetation along with typical type of forests. The two main eco-regions of the Atlantic Forest are namely the coastal Atlantic forest and the inland Atlantic Forest. The former is a slender land strip that stretches to 50-100 kilometers down the coastline while the latter spreads transversely on the Serra do Mar foothills in southern Brazil and stretches to Argentina and Paraguay. The latter forest type stretches to 600 kilometers interior and rises to 2,000 meters elevation above the sea level.
The three type of vegetation available in the Atlantic Forest are the lowland forest near the coastal plain, the grassland of the high altitude also known as the campo rupestre and the montane forests.
The Atlantic Forest of South America shelters about 20,000 species of plants and a great many endangered vertebrate species like lion and tamarins and few rare bird species. But about 950 kinds of birds are spotted in and around the Atlantic Forest and some of the popular ones are the parrot species, Brazilian merganser and the red-billed curassow.