Birds of Gondwanaland? How Costa Rican Birds Help Tell the History of the

Next time you are at a bird feeder in Costa Rica, or walking in the jungle, enjoy the knowledge that flying all around you is a living history of the planet. As someone with a degree in geology and a passion for birds, I’ve found it a real joy to uncover this knowledge.

What do geology and birds have to do with each other? And what’s the historical relevance in Costa Rica? Stay with me.

Living in Costa Rica helps you quickly understand how the earth moves under your feet. The active seismic nature of this part of the world demonstrates that the planet is not static — that the very continents are moving. This geologic process, called plate tectonics, describes the movement of the earth's land masses. Geologists have used this knowledge to reconstruct the motion of the continents backwards in time, as depicted in this video.

Supercontinent splits

If you trace the movements of the earth’s continents backward, about 550 million years ago there was only one land mass on the planet, known as the supercontinent of Pangea. About 200 million years ago this supercontinent split in two. What is now South America joined together with Africa, Antarctica, Australia and Zealandia, Arabia and India to form the supercontinent that geologists have named Gondwanaland. North America and Eurasia formed the other supercontinent called Laurasia.