Land bridge#Land bridge theory

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Image:Map of Sunda and Sahul.svg and Sunda, land masses that have provided land bridges at various points throughout the Pleistocene]]

• The Bassian Plain, which linked Australia to Tasmania
• The Antarctic Land Bridge, which connected South America, Antarctica, and Australia during the Late Cretaceous and Early Paleogene{{Cite journal |last=van den Ende |first=Conrad |last2=White |first2=Lloyd T. |last3=van Welzen |first3=Peter C. |date=2017-04-01 |title=The existence and break-up of the Antarctic land bridge as indicated by both amphi-Pacific distributions and tectonics |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1342937X16302829 |journal=Gondwana Research |volume=44 |pages=219–227 |doi=10.1016/j.gr.2016.12.006 |issn=1342-937X}}
• The Bering Land Bridge (aka Beringia), which intermittently connected Alaska (Northern America) with Siberia (North Asia) as sea levels rose and fell under the effect of ice ages
• GAARlandia, a hypothesized land bridge which potentially connected the Greater Antilles with South America during the late Eocene or early Oligocene
• Land bridges of Japan, several land bridges which connected Japan to Russia and Korea at various times in history
• De Geer Land Bridge, a route that connected Fennoscandia to northern Greenland
• Doggerland, a former landmass in the southern North Sea which connected the island of Great Britain to continental Europe during the last ice age
• The Thule Land Bridge, a now-vanished land bridge between the British Isles and Greenland
• Torres Strait land bridge, Sahul, between modern-day West Papua and Cape York
• Sundaland, a 1,800,000 km² area which connected the islands of Southeast Asia at various points during the last 2.6 million years

• Adam's Bridge (also known as Rama Setu), connecting India and Sri Lanka
• The Isthmus of Panama, whose appearance three million years ago allowed the Great American Biotic Interchange between North America and South America
• The Sinai Peninsula, linking Africa and Eurasia

File:Land bridges to explain Aus NZ S.Am plant groups.svg, noting similarities of the floras of Australia, New Zealand, and southern South America in his six-volume Flora Antarctica, published between 1844 and 1859, proposed that land bridges had once existed between these land masses.]]

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, vanished land bridges were an explanation for observed affinities of plants and animals in distant locations. Such scientists as Joseph Dalton Hooker noted puzzling geological, botanical, and zoological similarities between widely separated areas, and proposed land bridges between appropriate land masses that allowed species to spread between land masses.{{cite journal |last=Winkworth |first=Richard C. |title=Darwin and dispersal |journal=Biology International |volume=47 |year=2010 |pages=139–144 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258120865}}{{cite book |last=Corliss |first=William R. |author-link=William R. Corliss| title=Mysteries Beneath the Sea|publisher= Apollo Editions|date= June 1975|isbn=978-0815203735}} Chapter 5: "Up-and-Down Landbridges". In geology, the concept was first proposed by Jules Marcou in Lettres sur les roches du Jura et leur distribution géographique dans les deux hémisphères ("Letters on the rocks of the Jura [Mountains] and their geographic distribution in the two hemispheres"), 1857–1860.

Hypothesized land bridges included:

• Archatlantis from the West Indies to North Africa
• Archhelenis from Brazil to South Africa
• Archiboreis in the North Atlantic
• Archigalenis from Central America through Hawaii to Northeast Asia
• Archinotis from South America to Antarctica
• Lemuria in the Indian Ocean

The theory of continental drift provided an alternate explanation that did not require land bridges.{{cite journal |last=Holmes |first=Arthur |author-link=Arthur Holmes |title=Land Bridges or Continental Drift? |journal=Nature |date=18 April 1953 |pages=669-671 |url=https://www.nature.com/articles/171669a0.pdf}} However the continental drift theory was not widely accepted until the development of plate tectonics in the early 1960s, which more completely explained the motion of continents over geological time.{{cite journal |last=Le Pichon |first=Xavier |date=15 June 1968 |title=Sea-floor spreading and continental drift |journal=Journal of Geophysical Research |volume=73 |issue= 12 |pages=3661–97 |doi=10.1029/JB073i012p03661 |bibcode=1968JGR....73.3661L}}{{cite journal |last1=Mc Kenzie |first1=D. |last2=Parker |first2=R.L. |year=1967 |title=The North Pacific: an example of tectonics on a sphere |journal=Nature |volume=216 |pages=1276–1280 |doi=10.1038/2161276a0 |issue=5122 |bibcode= 1967Natur.216.1276M|s2cid=4193218}}

• Habitat fragmentation
• Sea level rise

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• {{Cite Americana|wstitle=Land-Bridges Across the Oceans|author=Ernest Ingersoll|author-link=Ernest Ingersoll|short=x|ref=none}}

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Category:Landforms

Category:Historical geology

Category:Biogeography

Category:Bridges