Augusto V. Cardona

Middle Miocene closure of the Central American Seaway.

Early closing between oceans The Central American Seaway, which once separated the Panama Arc from South America, may have closed 10 million years earlier than is believed. Montes et al. report that certain minerals of Panamanian provenance began to appear in South America during the Middle Miocene, 15 to 13 million years ago (see the Perspective by Hoorn and Flantua). The presence of the minerals indicates that rivers were flowing from the Panama Arc into the shallow marine basins of northern South America. One interpretation of this finding is that large-scale ocean flow between the Atlantic and Pacific had ended by then. If this is true, then many models of paleo-ocean circulation and biotic exchange between the Americas need to be reconsidered. Science, this issue p. 226; see also p. 186 The ocean gateway that once separated South America from North America disappeared longer ago than was thought. [Also see Perspective by Hoorn and Flantua] Uranium-lead geochronology in detrital zircons and provenance analyses in eight boreholes and two surface stratigraphic sections in the northern Andes provide insight into the time of closure of the Central American Seaway. The timing of this closure has been correlated with Plio-Pleistocene global oceanographic, atmospheric, and biotic events. We found that a uniquely Panamanian Eocene detrital zircon fingerprint is pronounced in middle Miocene fluvial and shallow marine strata cropping out in the northern Andes but is absent in underlying lower Miocene and Oligocene strata. We contend that this fingerprint demonstrates a fluvial connection, and therefore the absence of an intervening seaway, between the Panama arc and South America in middle Miocene times; the Central American Seaway had vanished by that time.

Evidence for middle Eocene and younger land emergence in central Panama: Implications for Isthmus closure

The rise of the Isthmus of Panama, linked to a number of climatic, paleoceanographic, and biological events, has been studied mostly from indirect, often distal, geochemical and biotic evidence. We have upgraded existing geologic mapping in central Panama with more than 2000 field stations, over 40 petrographic analyses, and more than 30 new geochronological and thermochronological analyses. This data set suggests that the isthmus was an uninterrupted chain above sea level from late Eocene until at least late Miocene times. The basement complex of central Panama is a folded-faulted, ∼3-km-thick arc sequence, intruded by granitoid bodies and onlapped by mildly deformed upper Eocene and Oligocene strata. Six U/Pb zircon ages in the granitoids–along with published geochronological data—reveal intense late Paleocene to middle Eocene magmatism (58–39 Ma), a temporary cessation of magmatic activity between 38 and 27 Ma, and renewed magmatism between 25 and 15 Ma in a position ∼75 km south of the former magmatic axis. Thermochronological analyses in zircon (eight U-Th/He ages), and in apatite crystals (four U-Th/He ages and nine fission-track ages) obtained from a subset of 58–54 Ma granitoid bodies record a concordant Lutetian-age (47–42 Ma) cooling from ∼200 °C to ∼70 °C in ∼5 m.y., and cooling below ∼40 °C between 12 and 9 Ma. Cooling is linked to exhumation by an angular unconformity that separates the deformed basement complex below from mildly deformed, upper Eocene to Oligocene terrestrial to shallow-marine strata above. Exhumation and erosion of the basement complex are independently confirmed by lower Miocene strata that have a detrital zircon signature that closely follows the central Panama basement complex age distribution. These results greatly restrict the width and depth of the strait separating southern Central America from South America, and challenge the widely accepted notion that the Central American Seaway closed in late Pliocene time, when the ice age began.

Provenance of middle to late Palaeozoic sediments in the northeastern Colombian Andes: implications for Pangea reconstruction

ABSTRACT Global-scale Palaeozoic plate tectonic reconstructions have suggested that Laurentia was obliquely approaching against the northwestern margin of Gondwana until the final agglutination of Pangea. In this contribution integrated petrographic analysis, heavy mineral analysis, and tourmaline geochemistry were done, and U–Pb detrital zircon geochronology was obtained, in late Palaeozoic sedimentary and meta-sedimentary units from the Floresta and Santander Massifs in the Eastern Colombian Andes in order to constrain their provenance and related it with the magmatic, sedimentary, and deformational record of the Gondwana–Laurentia convergence until the late Carboniferous to Permian formation of Pangea. Late Devonian to early Carboniferous sandstones from the Floresta Massif changed from sublithoarenites to lithoarenites, tracking the progressive uplift and unroofing of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, with associated volcanic activity. The U–Pb detrital zircon geochronology from the sedimentary and metasedimentary of Floresta and Santander documents Mesoproterozoic and Palaeoproterozoic sources, and younger Ordovician to Silurian age populations, that can be related to the early to middle Palaeozoic plutonic rocks and the Amazon Craton. The limited Silurian to Early Devonian detrital ages that contrast with the more significant Middle to Late Devonian zircons that document the erosion of contemporaneous magmatic sources formed after a late Silurian to Early Devonian reduction on the magmatic activity along the proto-Andean margin. These rocks were apparently deformed and metamorphosed between the late Carboniferous and the early Permian. It is suggested that the filling and deformation record of these rocks documented the changes in plate convergence obliquity at the western margin of Gondwana associated with the migration of Laurentia until its final position in Pangea. Between the late Carboniferous and the early Permian, peri-Gondwanan continental terranes also collided with the continental margin. Over-imposed Mesozoic tectonics have contributed to the final redistribution of these terranes to their current position. Abbreviations:LA: laser ablation inductively couple mass spectrometer; CL: cathodoluminiscence