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)