David A. Foster

International Partnership in Neotropical Paleobiology and Biodiversity — Once-in-a-Century Opportunity along the Panama Canal

Bruce J. MacFadden, David A. Foster

The American tropics (Neotropics) are home today to an extraordinarily high biodiversity that is threatened by global change, human impacts, and extinction. Very little is known about the history of this region millions of years ago when this biodiversity originated. A century ago during the initial excavations for the Canal, museums such as the Smithsonian Institution made natural history and geological collections that documented the biodiversity of this region. A century later, i.e., starting in 2007, the Republic of Panama will initiate extensive excavations to widen and expand the Panama Canal over the next decade. In so doing, highly fossiliferous deposits will be excavated that are similar to those that have previously yielded important clues to past biodiversity.

We will to capitalize on these new excavations to develop a long-term project that answers research questions about ancient Neotropical biodiversity preserved along the Panama Canal. The overarching research theme is to precisely and systematically document the ancient marine and terrestrial biodiversity of the Neotropics as preserved in the 25-million-year fossiliferous sequence in Panama. Given the otherwise poor exposures covered by dense vegetation, fossils are exceedingly rare from the Neotropics. The new excavations for the Canal, therefore, provide an unparalleled, if not unique opportunity to facilitate discovery and advance knowledge.
In order to achieve the goals of this project, here we are establishing collaborative partnerships between the UF Museum and Department of Geological Sciences, New Mexico Museum of Natural History, and in Panama, the Autoridad de Canal de Panama, Florida State University (Panama campus), Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación (Panama’s national science foundation), and the Museo de La Biodiversidad. This partnership will have strong international research and educational components. The research will include collection, description, and interpretation of new fossils at ongoing Canal excavations, and laboratory and museum studies by faculty and students to elucidate their importance, along with high-precision geochronology of the strata and tectonic analysis of the Panama Canal basin.