Publications by authors named "Jill S Leonard-Pingel"
Article Synopsis
- - The Isthmus of Panama's formation is a significant event in Earth's history, impacting ecosystems on land and in the ocean, with new studies suggesting it may have formed earlier than the commonly accepted 3 million years ago.
- - A thorough review of geological, paleontological, and molecular data indicates that the Isthmus formed more accurately around 2.8 million years ago, debunking the idea of an older formation.
- - The evidence supporting an earlier formation of the isthmus is not convincing, and it's important to critically assess claims of its existence prior to the Pliocene epoch.
Caribbean reef corals have declined sharply since the 1980s, but the lack of prior baseline data has hindered identification of drivers of change. To assess anthropogenic change in reef environments over the past century, we tracked the composition of subfossil assemblages of bivalve and gastropod mollusks excavated from pits below lagoonal and offshore reefs in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The higher prevalence of (a) infaunal suspension-feeding bivalves and herbivorous and omnivorous gastropods in lagoons and (b) epifaunal and suspension-feeding bivalves and carnivorous and suspension-feeding gastropods offshore reflected the greater influence of land-based nutrients/sediments within lagoons.
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