The Great American Biotic InterchangeFrancis G. Stehli, S. David Webb Springer US, 31 oct. 1985 - 532 pages Two rather different elements combine to explain the origin of this volume: one scientific and one personal. The broader of the two is the scientific basis-the time for such a volume had arrived. Geology had made remarkable progress toward an understanding of the phys ical history of the Caribbean Basin for the last 100 million years or so. On the biological side, many new discoveries had elucidated the distributional history of terrestrial orga nisms in and between the two Americas. Geological and biological data had been combined to yield the timing of important events with unprecedented resolution. Clearly, when each of two broad disciplines is making notable advances and when each provides new insights for the other, the rewards of cross-disciplinary contacts increase exponentially. The present volume represents an attempt to bring together a group of geologists, paleontologists and biologists capable of exploiting this opportunity through presentation of an interdisciplinary synthesis of evidence and hypothesis concerning interamerican connections during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic. Advances in plate tectonics form the basis for a modern synthesis and, in the broadest terms, dictate the framework within which the past and present distributions of organisms must be interpreted. Any scientific dis cipline must seek tests of its conclusions from data outside of its own confines. |
Table des matières
Caribbean Plate Relative Motions | 17 |
11 | 30 |
Geochronology and LandMammal Biochronology of | 49 |
Droits d'auteur | |
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Expressions et termes fréquents
appear Argentina Atlantic Basin biogeography Blancan boundary Brazil Bull Caribbean Plate caviomorph Cenozoic Central America Chortis Block climatic Colhuehuapian Colombia continental continents Costa Rica Deseadan dispersal distribution diversity early Eocene endemic Eocene evidence evolution extinct families fauna flood basalt Florida Formation fossil record Friasian genera genus Geol Geology groups habitats Hist Hoffstetter immigrants interchange known Kraglievich land bridge land mammals land-mammal age Late Cretaceous late Miocene late Paleocene Litopterna mammalian mammals marine Marshall marsupials Mexico middle Miocene motion North American Plate North and South northern Notoungulata notoungulates occurred oceanic Oligocene origin Paleocene paleomagnetic Paleontol Panama Pascual Patagonia Patterson Pleistocene Pliocene present primitive Province Provincia Recent region Reig relative represented Reptilia Río Riochican rocks rodents rotation Santacrucian savanna sea level sediments Simpson South America southern species Stratigraphic occurrence subduction suggests taxa tectonic Tiffanian tropical ungulates Uquian Venezuela vertebrates volcanic Webb zone