The linkage of the Americas had outsize impacts globally, and its controversial timing has similarly large implications for science.
Aside from supercontinent formations, North and South America were unconnected up until several million years ago; then a tiny slat of land linked the continents, triggering impacts that affected the entire planet. This small stretch of land, known as the Isthmus of Panama, transformed global climate and launched a huge natural experiment in migration for plants and animals.
The ensuing isthmus proved transformative, forcing warm, equatorial current from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic and up the North American coast as the Gulf Stream. Other current-related changes made the Atlantic saltier, powering global thermohaline circulation, according to the Science Advances study.
Present-day North American creatures like the Virginia opossum and porcupines arose from South American migrants, while"ancestors of bears, cats, dogs, horses, llamas and raccoons" traveled the other way, according to the Earth Observatory. Meanwhile, the isthmus isolated formerly commingled ocean populations that then evolved independently.
Scientists also linked the closing of the isthmus with the timing of ancient global cooling. Researchers noticed that ice sheet formation and related cooling coincided with when the isthmus was thought to have formed , the 2008 review said. So they hypothesized that this cooling was linked to changes in currents caused by the isthmus.
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