Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.32
Balboa Heights, Sosa Hill, and the Interamerican Bridge from the steps of the
Administration Building of the Panama Canal Company. Many hills like Sosa Hill are capped
by lava that pushes the softer underlying sediments into the canal.
Canal Zone are all associated with extensive marine and terrestrial, ver-
tebrate and invertebrate faunas. Mio-Pliocene and Pliocene fl oras include
plants from the Padre Miguel Group and the Herrería formations of Guate-
mala, and the Río Banano Formation of Costa Rica. There are fossil-bearing
deposits of Quaternary age throughout the region, such as those in Gatún
Lake studied by Alexandra Bartlett and Elso Barghoorn of Harvard Univer-
sity, that reveal the latest stages in the long history of vegetation and envi-
ronmental change in Central America (chaps. 6-9).
Modern Vegetation
The modern vegetation of Central America includes dry communities on
the karst topography of the Petén of Guatemala. A prominent member is
Brosimum alicastrum
(ramon, or breadnut), which was a food source of the
Maya for 2000 years. There are coastal mangrove and other lowland plant
formations, including a lowland neotropical rain forest more extensive and
diverse than its northernmost extension in Veracruz, Mexico. This com-
munity will be discussed more fully with reference to the Amazon Basin,
where it reaches its greatest extent and diversity. In contrast to the rain
