VEGETATION PATTERNS OF EARLY MIOCENE PANAMA

Central America has a high level of diversity in extant plant communities, however, limited studies have been conducted on patterns of forest composition and how forest diversity changed in response to climate in ancient biomes. Investigations of fossil pollen and spore assemblages provide a basis for inferring patterns of species arrival, family composition, and species diversification present throughout Panama during the Miocene-Pliocene. Data have been collected by the Panama Paleontology Project (PPP) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) from ~200 sites in several geologic formations along the northern coast of Panama, including the Gatun, Valiente, and Tuira formations. The palynomorphs compiled include ~300 morphotypes, which include families Anacardiaceae, Fabaceae (Striatopollis catatumbus), and Rhizophoraceae (Zonocostites ramonae) present in previous pollen studies and endocarp data (Graham, 1988, 1991). These data provide a unique opportunity to develop a comprehensive record of Miocene-Pliocene flora throughout Panama using multiple proxies of pollen, spore, and fruit/seed samplings.