Evolution and Environment in Tropical America

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.

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.