Sea Level, Climate, and the Central American Land Bridge

Abstract

The development of a land connection across Central America in Neogene time permitted the interchange of terrestrial faunas between North and South America. It also prevented the flow of tropical seawater from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. At the present time there are two low-lying regions that traverse Central America between the two oceans, one in northern Costa Rica and southern Nicaragua and the other across Panama. Today both of these regions would be awash if sea level were only moderately higher—34 m for the northern passage and 84 m for the southern (neglecting the excavations for the Panama Canal). It is possible that crustal motions during the past 15 million years have altered the topography of these two low-lying regions. However, it is fair to say that realistic estimates of eustatic sea level indicate that sea level lowering was an important (perhaps the most important) cause of the emergence of the land connection.