Formation of the Isthmus of Panama

By A. O’Dea, H. Lessios, A. Coates, R. Eytan, S. Restrepo-Moreno, A. L. Cione, L. Collins, A. de Queiroz, D. Farris, R. Norris and 25 more. Science Advances, 2016

800 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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

Subfields: Ecology, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Paleontology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3a83d17d30d527f8b18f8bf6e6dd3a0a8d1d4e95

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In Ecology

1. N. Matzke

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. Richard E. Olmstead
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In Paleontology

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Citations in the corpus

• Bayesian estimation of the global biogeographical history of the Solanaceae (2017, background): “Also, the 10-Ma threshold approximates a new estimated age of the closure of the Panama isthmus during the mid-Miocene (Montes et al., 2012; Bacon et al., 2013; but see O’Dea et al., 2016).”