User:Catalina/Thesis
Time Machine: Ice Age in the Andes. Open Day, Science Park, October 7th 2017
This is the test or prototype of my thesis project: with a video installation of two screens, we showed on the first screen a 3D animation of the shifting
elevational distributions of the páramos, Andean forests, and lowlands forests. During cold
conditions, the low elevational position of the páramos cause the many isolated páramo islands to
fuse, while during warmer conditions the páramos form isolated archipelagos. The biogeographic
history of the páramos has been reconstructed for the last million years and exposes the driver of the
evolutionary powerhouse, a mechanism described as the ‘flickering connectivity system’ (Flantua &
Hooghiemstra, 2018). The second screen showed photography of Colombian páramos and several
current plants species. As part of the installation, also three different generation of microscopes
were used to explain how this theory takes form after identifying pollen from deep fossil pollen
records.