Transition from the Farallon Plate subduction to the collision between South and Central America: Geological evolution of the Panama Isthmus

Abstract

This paper presents new geological constraints on the collision of southern Central America with South America, and the resulting deformational episodes that have affected the Panama Isthmus since the Late Cretaceous. The Panama Isthmus is located in southwestern Central America, and it represents the zone of contact between the two land masses: Central America and South America. This collision event is still active today. It has resulted in regional uplift since the Late Miocene/Pliocene and is responsible for the Great American Biotic Interchange between South and North America. Depending on the methods of investigation used, and due to the lack of data available, the time when this collision began is still widely debated and poorly constrained. To better constrain this age, we have studied the rock formations and the tectonic deformations in central and eastern Panama that have occurred since the Late Cretaceous. This study presents new rock ages, field-work documentation and analyses, and seismic-line interpretations, and it is complemented by spatial images for the eastern Panama area. During the Middle Eocene, a number of changes suddenly appeared in the geological records that were synchronous with the break-up of southern Central America into two smaller blocks: Chorotega and Choco. Our main results identify the prevalence of an extensional tectonic regime from the Middle Eocene to the Middle Miocene that caused the formation of horst and graben structures with thick sedimentary basin fills, and a synchronous clockwise block rotation. Here, we propose that these geologic events are associated with the initiation of the oblique collision of southern Central America with South America. The first contact of the southeastern extremity of Central America occurred around 40 Ma to 38 Ma, and then propagated northwestwards. We describe here this long-term collision episode in relation to the history of the Panama Isthmus.