The Isthmus of Panama is a land bridge whose appearance 3 million years ago allowed the Great American Interchange.

A land bridge, in biogeography, is an isthmus or wider land connection between otherwise separate areas, over which animals and plants are able to cross and colonise new lands. Land bridges can be created by marine regression, in which sea levels fall, exposing shallow, previously submerged sections of continental shelf; or when new land is created by plate tectonics; or occasionally when the sea floor rises due to post-glacial rebound after an ice age.

Prominent examples[link]

• The Bering land bridge, which intermittently connected Asia with North America as sea levels rose and fell under the effect of ice ages;
• Doggerland, a former landmass in the southern North Sea which connected the island of Great Britain to mainland Europe during the last ice age.
• The Isthmus of Panama, whose appearance three million years ago allowed the Great American Interchange;
• The Sinai Peninsula, linking Africa and Eurasia;
• The Adam's Bridge (known as Rama Setu), connecting India and Sri Lanka.

Land bridge theory[link]

In the 19th century a number of scientists noted puzzling geological and zoological similarities between widely separated areas. To solve these problems, "…whenever geologists and paleontologists were at a loss to explain the obvious transoceanic similarities of life that they deduced from the fossil records, they sharpened their pencils and sketched land bridges between appropriate continents."^[1] The concept was first proposed by Jules Marcou in Lettres sur les roches du Jura.^[2]

These hypothetical land bridges included:^[3]

• 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

All of these became obsolete with the gradual acceptance of continental drift and the development of plate tectonics by the mid-20th century.

See also[link]

• Habitat fragmentation
• Sea level rise

References[link]

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John Powell
Background information
Born	(1963-09-18) 18 September 1963 (age 48)
Origin	London, England, United Kingdom
Genres	Film scores
Occupations	Composer, Conductor, Music producer
Instruments	Piano, Violin
Years active	1990-present

John Powell (born 18 September 1963) is an English composer, best known for his scores to motion pictures. He has been based in the United States since 1997 and has composed the scores to over fifty feature films. He rose to fame in the late 1990s and 2000s, scoring numerous animated films, in addition to his live-action collaborations with directors Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass. His 2010 score for the film How to Train Your Dragon earned him his first Academy Award nomination at the 83rd Academy Awards. He was a member of Hans Zimmer's music studio, Remote Control Productions, and collaborated frequently with other composers from the studio, including Harry Gregson-Williams and Zimmer himself.

Life and career[link]

Powell was born in London. He originally trained as a violinist as a child, before studying at London's Trinity College of Music. He later ventured into jazz and rock music, playing in a soul band the Fabulistics. On leaving college, he composed music for commercials, which led to a job as an assistant to the composer Patrick Doyle on several film productions, including Much Ado About Nothing.

In 1995, he co-founded the London-based commercial music house Independently Thinking Music, which produced scores for more than 100 British and French commercials and independent films.

Powell's first film score was for the 1990 film Stay Lucky. He moved to the U.S. in 1997, and scored his first major film, Antz in 1998, the first film produced by DreamWorks Animation which he co-scored with fellow British composer Harry Gregson-Williams. Two years later the two collaborated again to compose the score to Chicken Run, and again the following year on Shrek, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. All subsequent Shrek films however, have been scored solely by Gregson-Williams. During 2001 he also scored Evolution, I Am Sam, Just Visiting, and Rat Race.

In 2002 Powell was hired to score The Bourne Identity, after Carter Burwell left the project, and has gone on to score all of director Doug Liman's subsequent films. He also returned to score the other two films in the series; The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, which were both directed by British director Paul Greengrass.

Following the Bourne films, Powell collaborated with Liman again to score the 2005 film Mr. & Mrs. Smith. That year, he also scored Robots.

In 2006, he scored Greengrass' United 93. He also composed music for Ice Age: The Meltdown, following David Newman, who scored the first Ice Age film, as well as X-Men: The Last Stand, and Happy Feet, for which he won a Film & TV Music Award for Best Score for an Animated Feature Film. The following year he scored The Bourne Ultimatum. In 2008 he collaborated with composer Hans Zimmer to score Kung Fu Panda, and also wrote music that year for Jumper, Hancock, and Bolt. In 2009 he scored the third, and to date, most popular installment in the Ice Age series; Dawn of the Dinosaurs.

In 2010, Powell composed the score to How To Train Your Dragon. This was his sixth score for a DreamWorks Animation film, although the first where he composed the whole score himself. It also became his first work to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Score. That year, he has also scored Greengrass' Green Zone, and Knight and Day.

Discography[link]

Awards and nominations[link]

Awards[link]

• 1998 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - Face/Off
• 1999 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - Antz (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2001 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - Chicken Run (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2001 Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Music Score an Animated Feature Production - Shrek (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2002 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - Shrek (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2003 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - The Bourne Identity
• 2004 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - The Italian Job
• 2005 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - The Bourne Supremacy
• 2006 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - Mr. & Mrs. Smith
• 2006 ASCAP Award for Top Box Office Films - Robots
• 2009 Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production - Kung Fu Panda (with Hans Zimmer)
• 2009 Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Television Production or Short Form - Kung Fu Panda: Secrets of the Furious Five (with Henry Jackman and Hans Zimmer)
• 2011 Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production - How To Train Your Dragon
• 2011 IFMCA Award for Best Original Score for an Animated Feature - How To Train Your Dragon
• 2011 IFMCA Award for Film Score of the Year - How To Train Your Dragon

Nominations[link]

• 1998 Saturn Award for Best Music - Face/Off
• 1999 Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature Production - Antz (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2000 Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Music in an Animated Feature Production - The Road to El Dorado (with Hans Zimmer, Elton John and Tim Rice)
• 2001 Saturn Award for Best Music - The Road to El Dorado (with Hans Zimmer)
• 2001 Phoenix Film Critics Society Awards for Best Original Score - Chicken Run (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2002 BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music - Shrek (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2002 Saturn Award for Best Music - Shrek (with Harry Gregson-Williams)
• 2005 Golden Satellite Award for Best Original Score - Alfie (with David A. Stewart and Mick Jagger)
• 2007 Saturn Award for Best Music - X-Men: The Last Stand
• 2007 Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production - Ice Age: The Meltdown
• 2007 BAFTA Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music - Happy Feet
• 2008 Grammy for Best Score Soundtrack Album for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media - Happy Feet
• 2008 Satellite Award for Best Original Score - Horton Hears a Who!
• 2008 Saturn Award for Best Music - The Bourne Ultimatum
• 2009 Saturn Award for Best Music - Jumper
• 2009 Annie Award for Best Music in an Animated Feature Production - Horton Hears a Who!
• 2010 Annie Award for Music in a Feature Production - Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
• 2011 Saturn Award for Best Music - How To Train Your Dragon
• 2011 BAFTA Award for Best Original Music - How To Train Your Dragon
• 2011 Academy Award for Best Original Score - How To Train Your Dragon

References[link]

External links[link]

• John Powell at the Internet Movie Database
• SoundtrackNet - John Powell Biography