Workers unearth rich fossil finds as they widen the Panama Canal

Paleontologists working along the construction site of the expanding Panama Canal are discovering a treasure trove of valuable riches that no pirate would have thought to plunder. As construction equipment excavate large areas next to where the new channel will be built and dredge the existing canal, paleontologists working with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and funded by the Panama Canal Authority, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society and a private donor comb the upturned terrain for fossils that provide valuable clues to the natural history of this Panamanian isthmus.

Emergence of the isthmus of Panama created the Caribbean Sea

Exciting discoveries about this important area of Central America are changing previous geological assumptions about when the Caribbean Sea was formed: (more…)