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Traffic lights at the Beringian crossroads

Nature volume 397, pages 103–104 (1999)Cite this article

The first opening of the Bering Strait would have had profound biogeographical and climatic consequences. The date of that event is now firmly pushed further back in time.

Beringia is the area where the two greatest landmasses on Earth (Eurasia and America) and two great oceans (the Pacific and Arctic) meet. At the moment, the two continents are separated by the Bering Strait, providing a green light for interchange of marine dwellers but preventing most terrestrial organisms from travelling between the Old and New Worlds. The lights, however, changed only about 11,000 years ago, when world sea level recovered from the last deep marine regression caused by global cooling and the locking-up of water in continental glaciers.

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Figure 1: Timescale for events in Beringia, in millions of years (Myr).

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  1. the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, 33 Leninskiy Prospect, Moscow, 117071, Russia

    Andrei Sher

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Sher, A. Traffic lights at the Beringian crossroads. Nature 397, 103–104 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16341

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