A 10-million-year biogeographic holding pen primed the Great American Biotic Interchange

The movement of taxa between North and South America across the Panamanian land bridge, known as the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), established modern-day mammal assemblages in the Americas, heralding the decisive end of what has been called the "splendid isolation" of the South American fauna. Lacking substantive low-latitude records, previous work on this pattern relied on South American and temperate North American fossils to conclude that pulsed interchanges began about 2.8 million years ago (mya). Based on new low-latitude fossil data from México, we found evidence for a prolonged, triphasic interchange. Phase 1 consisted of the initial accumulation of northern higher-latitude mammals in a Mexican "holding pen" beginning 10 mya. Dispersal began in phase 2, with a strong north-south gradient and increasing biogeographic connections (7 to 3 mya). The final phase consisted of the already well-described taxonomic pulses (from ~2.8 mya).

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Publication Details

Journal
Science
Published
2026-07-30
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aef2893
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Evolution and Paleontology Studies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
15.10

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article

A 10-million-year biogeographic holding pen primed the Great American Biotic Interchange

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1 citations
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A 10-million-year biogeographic holding pen primed the Great American Biotic Interchange

Xiaoming Wang, H. Gregory McDonald, Yang Wang, Z. Jack Tseng, Óscar Carranza‐Castañeda, José Jorge Aranda-Gómez, Chance Hannold, Leah Kahn, Adolfo Pacheco-Castro, Julio César Chávez-Ambriz
article en
1 citations

Abstract

The movement of taxa between North and South America across the Panamanian land bridge, known as the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI), established modern-day mammal assemblages in the Americas, heralding the decisive end of what has been called the "splendid isolation" of the South American fauna. Lacking substantive low-latitude records, previous work on this pattern relied on South American and temperate North American fossils to conclude that pulsed interchanges began about 2.8 million years ago (mya). Based on new low-latitude fossil data from México, we found evidence for a prolonged, triphasic interchange. Phase 1 consisted of the initial accumulation of northern higher-latitude mammals in a Mexican "holding pen" beginning 10 mya. Dispersal began in phase 2, with a strong north-south gradient and increasing biogeographic connections (7 to 3 mya). The final phase consisted of the already well-described taxonomic pulses (from ~2.8 mya).

ScienceVol. 393(6810)
Florida State University (US), Bureau of Land Management (US), Planetary Science Institute (US), Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (US), Autonomous University of Queretaro (MX), Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (US), National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (US), Instituto de Geociencias (ES), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX), University of California, Berkeley (US), Stanford University (US)
National Science Foundation
Life below water
Openalex Percentile: Top 1%
Evolution and Paleontology Studies
15.10
DOISourceOpenAlex
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