Amphi-American Neogene teleostean tropical fishes

During the last 20 years of paleontological expeditions in different sedimentary basins of Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Jamaica, Trinidad, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Venezuela, teleost otoliths have been found along the tropical western central Atlantic (TWCA) and the tropical eastern central Pacific (TECP); these otoliths relate to the amphi-American distribution of fishes and the paleoceanographic and paleoenvironmental changes in the region during the Cenozoic. This study analyzes of the marine fish fossil based on comprehensive species records belonging to the Neogene period and listed at the generic level. Joint classification and ordination techniques were used to identify and analyze data comprising 169 genera belonging to 56 families and 20 orders, which were mostly represented by the demersal species that inhabit shallow waters. Analyses of principal components were used to calculate the covariance and the variance between formations, countries, basins, and age. The results showed that the main faunistic changes along the geochronological sequence in the Neogene basins of tropical America were a consequence of paleoenvironmental changes.