Evolution and Environment in Tropical America

Front Cover
Jeremy B. C. Jackson, Ann F. Budd, Anthony G. Coates
University of Chicago Press, 15. dets 1996 - 425 pages
How were the tropical Americas formed? This ambitious volume draws on extensive, multidisciplinary research to develop new views of the geological formation of the isthmus linking North and South America and of the major environmental changes that reshaped the Neotropics to create its present-day marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

Recent discoveries show that dramatic changes in climate and ocean circulation can occur very quickly, and that ecological communities respond just as rapidly. Abrupt changes in the composition of fossil assemblages, formerly dismissed as artifacts of a poor fossil record, now are seen as accurate records of swift changes in the composition of ocean communities.

The twenty-four contributors use current work in paleontology, geology, oceanography, anthropology, ecology, and evolution to paint this challenging portrait of rapid environmental and evolutionary change. Their conclusions argue for a revision of existing interpretations of the fossil record and the processes—including invading Eurasian peoples—that have produced it.

From inside the book

Contents

Evolution and Environment Introduction and Overview
1
The Geologic Evolution of the Central American Isthmus
21
Graphic Correlation of Marine Deposits from the Central American Isthmus Implications for Late Neogene Paleooceanography
57
Biotic and Oceanographic Response to the Pliocene Closing of the Central American Isthmus
76
The Oxygen Isotopic Record of Seasonality in Neogene Bivalves from the Central American Isthmus
105
Environmental Changes in Caribbean Shallow Waters Relative to the Closing Tropical American Seaway
130
PlioPleistocene Turnover and Extinctions in the Caribbean ReefCoral Fauna
168
Speciation Extinction and the Decline of Arborescent Growth in Neogene and Quaternary Cheilostome Bryozoa of Tropical America
205
Paciphilia Revisited Transisthmian Evolution of the Strombina Group Gastropoda Columbellidae
234
Diversity of PlioceneRecent Mollusks in the Western Atlantic Extinction Origination and Environmental Change
271
Molecular Comparisons of Transisthmian Species Pairs Rates and Patterns of Evolution
303
Late Cenozoic Evolution of the Neotropical Mammal Fauna
335
Quaternary Environmental History and Forest Diversity in the Neotropics
359
List of Contributors
407
Index
409
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Page 331 - Wilson. 1991. Evolution of the cytochrome b gene of mammals.

About the author (1996)

Jeremy B. C. Jackson is director of the Center for Tropical Paleoecology and Archeology at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the William and Mary B. Ritter Professor of Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Scott Lidgard is an associate curator of fossil invertebrates in the Department of Geology at the Field Museum, lecturer in the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, and adjunct associate professor of biology at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Frank K. McKinney is a professor emeritus in the Department of Geology at Appalachian State University and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Palaeontology at The Natural History Museum, London.

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