natural history museum visitors’ understanding of...
TRANSCRIPT
GABI RET--Outline
• Welcome and introductions
• Thanks (people, NSF)
• General comments & initial feedback
• Logistics (bw)
• Schedule
• Learning goals
• Talk
• Collections tours, etc.
Background: Panama project and GABI
2012
2013
2014
2015
Learning goals
• You will learn from us—
– The practice of paleontology
– The content of paleontology
• We will learn from you
– Ideas for how to structure and improve this
pilot PD in the future
History of scienceGABI: Darwin’s adventure—1830s
19th century--Paris museum: Cuvier’s curiosities
…there was thus accomplished, toward the end of the Pliocene, one of the most remarkable migrations of the faunas that geology has been able to record.
-K. A. von Zittel (1893)
Simpson—1980, Splendid Isolation
• Three faunal “strata” in South America
– First Phase: Old timers alone
– Second Phase: Aliens appear
– Third Phase: Interchange (GABI)
The Americas—Since the Miocene
About 20 million years ago
The Great American Biotic Interchange
(GABI)—closure at 4 million years ago
Florida, 2 million years ago
This could be almost anywhere in the Americas during the Pliocene
South America 1 million years agoTarija Fauna, Bolivia
San Blas section
Classic middle PleistoceneGABI Fauna
Brasil
Chile
Tarija
Megafaunal extinction 10 to 15 K years ago
Time scaleS America N America
GABI starts
Not so simple story--S. David Webb
From the South to the NorthHemphillian—McGehee Farm
At 8.5 million years, early phase of GABI
Along Webb’s Gulf Coastal Corridor
Early northward dispersal—late Miocene in
Mexico (Flynn et al.)
5 million years ago
Ground sloths Armadillo-like creatures
Terror bird Titanis: Florida & Texas,
since 5 million years ago
North to south
“raccoons” (Procyonidae)
The plot thickens: North to Southlate Miocene southward dispersal in Amazon
GomphotheresCampbell et al. (2009) describe a new
Genus Amahaucatherium from the
late Miocene of Amazonia.
How did they cross before Isthmus?
3. Synthesis of what we know in 2016S America N America
GABI 1
GABI 2
GABI 3
GABI 4
Titanus
“raccoons”
other sloths
? Proboscidians
?Deer-like
Sloths, giant armadillos
Why did they arrive in SA at different times?
Tomorrow
• Richard will talk specifically about the
GABI in Florida and the significance of
Montbrook
Take-home messages
• GABI is much more complex than
previously thought.
• We continue to learn more about the
details of GABI.
• More discoveries to be made.
• You are helping make these discoveries at
Montbrook
(End)