History of Upwelling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific and The
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
PALAEO-06168; No of Pages 8 Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology xxx (2012) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/palaeo History of upwelling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific and the paleogeography of the Isthmus of Panama Aaron O'Dea ⁎, Natalia Hoyos, Félix Rodríguez, Brigida De Gracia, Carlos Degracia Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, PO Box 0843‐03092 Balboa, Panama article info abstract Article history: Today there is a tight-knit relationship between the elevation of the Central American Isthmus and the ocean- Received 18 April 2012 ographic conditions of the Tropical Eastern Pacific. Where the elevation drops below 500 m low-level wind Received in revised form 25 May 2012 jets pass seasonally from the Atlantic to the Pacific driving coastal upwelling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific. Accepted 8 June 2012 This paper determines if seasonal upwelling was present in five Pliocene and Pleistocene fossiliferous sites on Available online xxxx the Pacific coast of the Burica region of the Isthmus of Panama using two independent approaches that compare bryozoan morphology and whole community composition of fossiliferous localities with material from upwelling Keywords: fi zs-MART and non-upwelling modern localities. No de nitive evidence of seasonal upwelling exists in the Pliocene, implying Communities non-analogous oceanographic conditions because of continued interoceanic connection prior to the closure of the Paleoelevation Isthmus of Panama. Conversely, data from three mid-Pleistocene sites reveal robust evidence of strong seasonal Paleoaltitude upwelling suggesting that the elevationoftheIsthmusmusthavebeensufficiently low to permit wind-jets to form. A low-elevation Isthmus of Panama may have persisted until as recently as the mid-Pleistocene. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction speculate on the elevation of the Isthmus of Panama during the last 5 million years. The formation of the Isthmus of Panama stands as a model in paleooceanographic and evolutionary studies (Coates and Obando, 1996; Jackson and Budd, 1996; Haug and Tiedemann, 1998; Lessios, 2. Sequence of events 2008) yet there remain many uncertainties regarding the paleoclimate, paleogeography and the timing and rates of uplift of the Isthmus during The collision of Central America with the South American continent its formation (Schmidt, 2007; Farris et al., 2011; Montes et al., 2012). and the subsequent uplift of the Isthmus of Panama resulted in the Today, the topography of the Central American Isthmus strongly dic- unification of two continents and the severance of two great oceans. tates the marine oceanic environments of the Tropical Eastern Pacific Terrestrial fauna and flora of each continent merged fully for the first (TEP). Trade winds pass from the Caribbean over Central America on a time since the entire break up of Gondwana in the Cretaceous in seasonal basis, and where elevation is low, sea-level wind-jets form what is dubbed the Great American Biotic Interchange (Marshall, that drive strong coastal upwelling in certain regions along the Pacific 1988; Webb, 2006) with winners and losers shaping the modern day coast (D'Croz and O'Dea, 2007). This seasonal upwelling is one of the terrestrial communities of both continents. The marine history of the most important drivers of large-scale ecological and biogeographical region is no less dynamic. The Central American Seaway (CAS) first patterns in the TEP, yet the history of upwelling along the Pacificcoast opened in the Early Jurassic when the continents of South and North of the Isthmus during the Late Neogene remains little studied. This America parted (Smith and Tipper, 1986), forming the western open- paper first explores the relationship between Isthmus elevation and up- ing of the pan-tropical Tethys Ocean, and throughout the latter half welling today using topographic and satellite-derived oceanographic of the Mesozoic and almost the entire Cenozoic providing a crucial data. The presence or absence of upwelling is then determined for gateway for the movement of equatorial water (and therefore marine coastal seas of the Burica peninsula on the PacificcoastoftheIsthmus organisms) between the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans. Consequently, of Panama during the Pliocene and Pleistocene using two independent when the Isthmus severed the marine connection in the Neogene, paleoenvironmental approaches. Finally, the results are used to oceanic circulation on a global scale was fundamentally altered with equally global effects. These included major shifts in the salinity patterns of equatorial waters (Haug et al., 2001), radical changes in lat- itudinal heat transport in the Atlantic, the initiation and intensification ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +507 212 8065; fax: +507 212 8000. of northern hemisphere glaciation (Haug and Tiedemann, 1998)(but E-mail address: [email protected] (A. O'Dea). see subsequent interrogation of this theory by Klocker et al. (2005)) 0031-0182/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.06.007 Please cite this article as: O'Dea, A., et al., History of upwelling in the Tropical Eastern Pacific and the paleogeography of the Isthmus of Panama, Palaeogeogr. Palaeoclimatol. Palaeoecol. (2012), doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2012.06.007 2 A. O'Dea et al. / Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology xxx (2012) xxx–xxx and the desertification of Africa which may have been decisive in hom- high mountainous regions in central Panama (Retallack and Kirby, inid evolution (Stanley, 1998). 2007) and the paleogeography of the Isthmus in the critical times of Isolated populations of marine animals and plants began to follow the Late Miocene and Pliocene remains to be defined. discrete evolutionary trajectories in the newly split Tropical Western Atlantic (TWA) and the TEP (Knowlton and Weigt, 1998; Lessios, 3. Present day Isthmus elevation and oceanographic conditions in 2008) and the hydrological conditions of both began to shift dramatical- the Pacific ly (Keigwin, 1978, 1982; Ibaraki, 1997; Fiedler and Talley, 2006). Up- welling declined and primary productivity collapsed (Allmon, 2001; Modern marine conditions along the PacificcoastofCentral Todd et al., 2002; Jain and Collins, 2007; O'Dea et al., 2007a)driving America are typically dominated by strongly-layered bodies of water widespread extinction across the TWA (Allmon, 1992; Budd et al., capped by the eastern Pacific warm pool with sea surface temperatures 1996; Jackson and D'croz, 1999; Jackson et al., 1999; Jackson and (SST) of 27 °C or more (Fiedler and Talley, 2006). This structured water Johnson, 2000; Todd et al., 2002; O'Dea et al., 2007a; Johnson et al., column breaks down during the boreal winter by the action of 2008; O'Dea and Jackson, 2009; Smith and Jackson, 2009). high-pressure systems in the TWA and the Gulf of Mexico that induce On land, a few small-bodied animals had managed to traverse from strong wind-jets that pass over the cordillera of Central America (aka continent to continent in the Late Miocene as observed in the fossil trade-winds). Where the isthmus is sufficiently low, these wind jets (Webb, 1985) and molecular (e.g. Pinto-Sanchez et al., 2012)records are sufficiently intense and remain at low enough altitudes to push via rafting helped by the formation of an ephemeral near-complete surface waters in the TEP away from the coast of Central America. land bridge around 10 Ma (Roth et al., 2000; Coates et al., 2003; Coates Deeper, nutrient rich and cool waters are then upwelled to replace et al., 2004). Likewise, the effects of deeper water shut-off occurred this expelled surface water. This process of wind-jet driven seasonal long before those of shallow water as observed in the timings of sepa- upwelling occurs in three regions: The Gulf of Tehuantepec in ration of different organisms with different life histories (O'Dea et al., Mexico, the Gulf of Papagayo, Nicaragua and the Gulf of Panama, 2007a; Landau et al., 2009; Smith and Jackson, 2009)andtheearlier central Panama (Legeckis, 1988; McCreary et al., 1989; Xie et al., molecular divergences of deep-water vs. shallow-water organisms 2005; D'Croz and O'Dea, 2007, 2009), and each are adjacent to areas (Knowlton and Weigt, 1998; Naro-Maciel et al., 2008). Terrestrial evi- to the North or Northeast where the land drops to around 500 m dence points to a ‘final’ closure date of ~2.8 Ma when an exodus of larg- (Figs. 1,2). er bodied organisms took place longitudinally, whereas most maritime Upwelling is seasonal because wind-jets only form when the Inter- evidence places final closure slightly earlier at ~3.5–3 Ma (reviewed by tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) lies to the south of the region in Schmidt, 2007), a discrepancy nevertheless expected given that an ef- question. Upwelling is therefore governed by the north–south migra- fective oceanic barrier would have appeared before the formation of tion of the ITCZ and is consequently predictable. Another consequence an intact land bridge that would have permitted the large-scale emi- is that the duration of upwelling becomes progressively shorter as one gration of large mammals and flightless birds into their respective travels south. In the most northerly Gulf of Tehuantepec winds and up- new habitats. welling persist for over eight months whilst at the most southerly Although a Late Pliocene date for final closure is now well con- range in the Gulf of Panama, the phenomenon lasts just three months strained and strongly supported by several lines of independent (Legeckis, 1988; McCreary et al., 1989; Xie et al., 2005; D'Croz and evidence, the form, elevation and degree of subaerial emergence of O'Dea, 2007, 2009). Despite being ephemeral, upwelling in all regions the southern tip of Central America after it collided with South America is usually very intense, supporting large-scale commercially-valuable approximately 24 Ma (Farris et al., 2011) remains unresolved (Kirby fisheries (Jackson and D'Croz, 1997, D'Croz and O'Dea, 2007).