Formation of the Isthmus of Panama

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Abstract

Independent evidence from rocks, fossils, and genes converge on a cohesive narrative of isthmus formation in the Pliocene.

Abstract

The formation of the Isthmus of Panama stands as one of the greatest natural events of the Cenozoic, driving profound biotic transformations on land and in the oceans. Some recent studies suggest that the Isthmus formed many millions of years earlier than the widely recognized age of approximately 3 million years ago (Ma), a result that if true would revolutionize our understanding of environmental, ecological, and evolutionary change across the Americas. To bring clarity to the question of when the Isthmus of Panama formed, we provide an exhaustive review and reanalysis of geological, paleontological, and molecular records. These independent lines of evidence converge upon a cohesive narrative of gradually emerging land and constricting seaways, with formation of the Isthmus of Panama sensu stricto around 2.8 Ma. The evidence used to support an older isthmus is inconclusive, and we caution against the uncritical acceptance of an isthmus before the Pliocene.

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Most cited references 77

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The Phanerozoic record of global sea-level change.

K. Miller (2005)

We review Phanerozoic sea-level changes [543 million years ago (Ma) to the present] on various time scales and present a new sea-level record for the past 100 million years (My). Long-term sea level peaked at 100 +/- 50 meters during the Cretaceous, implying that ocean-crust production rates were much lower than previously inferred. Sea level mirrors oxygen isotope variations, reflecting ice-volume change on the 10(4)- to 10(6)-year scale, but a link between oxygen isotope and sea level on the 10(7)-year scale must be due to temperature changes that we attribute to tectonically controlled carbon dioxide variations. Sea-level change has influenced phytoplankton evolution, ocean chemistry, and the loci of carbonate, organic carbon, and siliciclastic sediment burial. Over the past 100 My, sea-level changes reflect global climate evolution from a time of ephemeral Antarctic ice sheets (100 to 33 Ma), through a time of large ice sheets primarily in Antarctica (33 to 2.5 Ma), to a world with large Antarctic and large, variable Northern Hemisphere ice sheets (2.5 Ma to the present).

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AWTY (are we there yet?): a system for graphical exploration of MCMC convergence in Bayesian phylogenetics.

Johan Nylander, James C Wilgenbusch, Dan L Warren … (2008)

A key element to a successful Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) inference is the programming and run performance of the Markov chain. However, the explicit use of quality assessments of the MCMC simulations-convergence diagnostics-in phylogenetics is still uncommon. Here, we present a simple tool that uses the output from MCMC simulations and visualizes a number of properties of primary interest in a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, such as convergence rates of posterior split probabilities and branch lengths. Graphical exploration of the output from phylogenetic MCMC simulations gives intuitive and often crucial information on the success and reliability of the analysis. The tool presented here complements convergence diagnostics already available in other software packages primarily designed for other applications of MCMC. Importantly, the common practice of using trace-plots of a single parameter or summary statistic, such as the likelihood score of sampled trees, can be misleading for assessing the success of a phylogenetic MCMC simulation. The program is available as source under the GNU General Public License and as a web application at http://ceb.scs.fsu.edu/awty.

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Middle Miocene closure of the Central American Seaway.

C Montes, Hugo Cardona, Priscilla C Jaramillo … (2015)

Uranium-lead geochronology in detrital zircons and provenance analyses in eight boreholes and two surface stratigraphic sections in the northern Andes provide insight into the time of closure of the Central American Seaway. The timing of this closure has been correlated with Plio-Pleistocene global oceanographic, atmospheric, and biotic events. We found that a uniquely Panamanian Eocene detrital zircon fingerprint is pronounced in middle Miocene fluvial and shallow marine strata cropping out in the northern Andes but is absent in underlying lower Miocene and Oligocene strata. We contend that this fingerprint demonstrates a fluvial connection, and therefore the absence of an intervening seaway, between the Panama arc and South America in middle Miocene times; the Central American Seaway had vanished by that time.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Sci Adv

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Sci Adv

Journal ID (publisher-id): SciAdv

Journal ID (hwp): advances

Title: Science Advances

Publisher: American Association for the Advancement of Science

ISSN (Electronic): 2375-2548

Publication date Collection: August 2016

Publication date (Electronic): 17 August 2016

Volume: 2

Issue: 8

Electronic Location Identifier: e1600883

Affiliations

[1 ]Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 0843-03092, Balboa, Republic of Panama.

[2 ]Department of Marine Biology, Texas A&M University at Galveston, Galveston, TX 77553, USA.

[3 ]Departamento de Geociencias y Medio Ambiente Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia.

[4 ]Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA.

[5 ]División Paleontología Vertebrados, Museo de La Plata, B1900FWA La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[6 ]Department of Earth and Environment, and Department of Biological Sciences, Florida International University, Miami, FL 33199, USA.

[7 ]Department of Biology, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557–0314, USA.

[8 ]Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306, USA.

[9 ]Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA 92093–0244, USA.

[10 ]U.S. Geological Survey, 3215 Marine Street (Suite E127), Boulder, CO 80303, USA.

[11 ]Department of Geological Sciences, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92507, USA.

[12 ]Universidade Federal Fluminense, Instituto de Biologia, Campus do Valonguinho, Outeiro São João Batista, s/n°, cep. 24020-141, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

[13 ]Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Rutgers University, 610 Taylor Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854–8066, USA.

[14 ]Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA.

[15 ]Laboratório de Paleozoologia, Departamento de Biologia Geral, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Av. Antonio Carlos, 6627, cep. 31270 010, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.

[16 ]Department of Biology, Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323, USA.

[17 ]Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, Bogotá, Colombia.

[18 ]Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, 3040 Valley Life Science Building #3140, Berkeley, CA 94720–3140, USA.

[19 ]Department of Geology and Geophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

[20 ]Department of Earth Sciences, Natural History Museum, London SW7 5BD, UK.

[21 ]Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.

[22 ]Department of Invertebrate Zoology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.

[23 ]Department of Geology, Washington and Lee University, 204 West Washington Street, Lexington, VA 24450, USA.

[24 ]Department of Biology, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, 2538 McCarthy Mall, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA.

[25 ]Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20013, USA.

[26 ]Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.

Author notes

[* ]Corresponding author. Email: odeaa@ 123456si.edu

[†]

Deceased.

Author information

Harilaos A. Lessios http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4726-1382

Laurel S. Collins http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4181-7271

David W. Farris http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8728-2746

Richard D. Norris http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5288-1733

Robert F. Stallard http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8209-7608

Michael O. Woodburne http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2516-9622

Marie-Pierre Aubry http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5613-5559

Mario A. Cozzuol http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3645-0401

Seth Finnegan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6175-6173

Ethan L. Grossman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1045-6939

Nicholas D. Pyenson http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4678-5782

Paola G. Rachello-Dolmen http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2056-9101

Leopoldo Soibelzon http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9373-3494

Jonathan A. Todd http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0433-1611

Article

Publisher ID: 1600883

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1600883

PMC ID: 4988774

PubMed ID: 27540590

SO-VID: ed0121ec-f7e3-4d88-a0e3-f599e91e089a

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 24 April 2016

Date accepted : 18 July 2016

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000160, Division of Earth Sciences;

Award ID: ID0EKBHK9559

Award ID: EAR 1325683

Award Recipient : Aaron O’Dea

Funded by: SENACYT;

Award ID: ID0EWIHK9560

Award Recipient : Aaron O’Dea

Funded by: CONICET;

Award ID: ID0E5PHK9561

Award Recipient : Alberto Cione

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Copyeditor Justin Noriel

Keywords: evolution,ecology,land-bridge,central america,gabi,isthmian closure

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Keywords: evolution, ecology, land-bridge, central america, gabi, isthmian closure

Formation of the Isthmus of Panama

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Abstract

Abstract

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Crocodylian evolution

Most cited references 77

The Phanerozoic record of global sea-level change.

AWTY (are we there yet?): a system for graphical exploration of MCMC convergence in Bayesian phylogenetics.

Middle Miocene closure of the Central American Seaway.

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