In biogeography, a land bridge is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which

animals Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...

and

plant Plants are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic eukaryotes of the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all curr ...

s are able to cross and colonize new lands. A land bridge can be created by marine regression, in which

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardise ...

s fall, exposing shallow, previously submerged sections of continental shelf; or when new land is created by

plate tectonics Plate tectonics (from the la, label= Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large t ...

; or occasionally when the sea floor rises due to

post-glacial rebound Post-glacial rebound (also called isostatic rebound or crustal rebound) is the rise of land masses after the removal of the huge weight of ice sheets during the last glacial period, which had caused isostatic depression. Post-glacial rebound ...

after an

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

Prominent examples

Adam's Bridge Adam's Bridge, '; ta, ஆதாம் பாலம் ' also known as Rama's Bridge or ''Rama Setu'', '; ta, ராமர் பாலம் '; sa, रामसेतु ' is a chain of natural limestone shoals, between Pamban Island, a ...

(also known as Rama Setu), connecting

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

and

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

* The Bassian Plain, which linked Australia and

Tasmania ) , nickname = , image_map = Tasmania in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Tasmania in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdi ...

* The Bering Land Bridge (aka Beringia), which intermittently connected

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S ...

(

Northern America Northern America is the northernmost subregion of North America. The boundaries may be drawn slightly differently. In one definition, it lies directly north of Middle America (including the Caribbean and Central America).Gonzalez, Joseph. ...

) with

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part o ...

(

North Asia North Asia or Northern Asia, also referred to as Siberia, is the northern region of Asia, which is defined in geographical terms and is coextensive with the Asian part of Russia, and consists of three Russian regions east of the Ural Mountai ...

) as sea levels rose and fell under the effect of ice ages * East Asia’s former unnamed landmass, During the last Ice Age, which ended approximately 15,000 years ago, Japanese Archipelago was connected to the main continent through several land bridges, notably one linking the Ryukyu Islands to Taiwan and Kyushu, one linking Kyushu to the Korean peninsula, and another one connecting Hokkaido to Sakhalin and the Siberian mainland.

Sea of Japan The Sea of Japan is the marginal sea between the Japanese archipelago, Sakhalin, the Korean Peninsula, and the mainland of the Russian Far East. The Japanese archipelago separates the sea from the Pacific Ocean. Like the Mediterranean Sea, it h ...

once considered a great salt lake. * De Geer Land Bridge, a route that connected

Fennoscandia __NOTOC__ Fennoscandia ( Finnish, Swedish and no, Fennoskandia, nocat=1; russian: Фенноскандия, Fennoskandiya) or the Fennoscandian Peninsula is the geographical peninsula in Europe, which includes the Scandinavian and Kola penins ...

to northern

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is ...

* Doggerland, a former landmass in the southern

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

which connected the island of

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

to continental Europe during the last ice age * The

Isthmus of Panama The Isthmus of Panama ( es, Istmo de Panamá), also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien (), is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country ...

, whose appearance three million years ago allowed the Great American Biotic Interchange between North America and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...

* The Thule Land Bridge, a since disappeared land bridge between the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles (O ...

and

* The

Sinai Peninsula The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai (now usually ) (, , cop, Ⲥⲓⲛⲁ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is a ...

, linking

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

and

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...

* Torres Strait land bridge, Sahul, between modern-day West Papua and Cape York

Land bridge theory

In the 19th century, scientists including

Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of ...

noted puzzling geological, botanical, and zoological similarities between widely separated areas. To solve these problems, they proposed land bridges between appropriate land masses. 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 ountains and their geographic distribution in the two hemispheres"), 1857–1860. The hypothetical 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 Continental drift is the hypothesis that the Earth's continents have moved over geologic time relative to each other, thus appearing to have "drifted" across the ocean bed. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed into the science of pla ...

provided an alternate explanation that did not require land bridges. However the continental drift theory was not widely accepted until the development of

in the early 1960s, which more completely explained the motion of continents over geological time.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Land Bridge Landforms Historical geology Biogeography Bridges

Prominent examples

Land bridge theory

See also

References

Further reading

External links