Uranium-lead geochronology in detrital zircons and provenance analyses in eight boreholes and two surface stratigraphic sections in the northern Andes provide insight into the time of closure of the Central American Seaway. The timing of this closure has been correlated with Plio-Pleistocene global oceanographic, atmospheric, and biotic events. We found that a uniquely Panamanian Eocene detrital zircon fingerprint is pronounced in middle Miocene fluvial and shallow marine strata cropping out in the northern Andes but is absent in underlying lower Miocene and Oligocene strata. We contend that this fingerprint demonstrates a fluvial connection, and therefore the absence of an intervening seaway, between the Panama arc and South America in middle Miocene times; the Central American Seaway had vanished by that time.

Integration of several geologic lines of evidence reveals the prevalence of a lowland trans-Andean portal communicating western Amazonia and the westernmost Andes from at least middle Miocene until Pliocene times. Volcanism and crustal shortening built up relief in the southernmost Central and Eastern Cordilleras of Colombia, closing this lowland gap. Independent lines of evidence consist first, of field mapping in the Tatacoa Desert with a coverage area of ∼381 km2, 1,165 km of geological contact traces, 164 structural data points, and 3D aerial digital mapping models. This map documents the beginning of southward propagation of the southernmost tip of the Eastern Cordillera’s west-verging, fold-and-thrust belt between ∼12.2 and 13.7 Ma. Second, a compilation of new and published detrital zircon geochronology in middle Miocene strata of the Tatacoa Desert shows three distinctive age populations: middle Miocene, middle Eocene, and Jurassic; the first two sourced west of the Central Cordillera, the latter in the Magdalena Valley. Similar populations with the three distinctive peaks have now been recovered in western Amazonian middle Miocene strata. These observations, along with published molecular and fossil fish data, suggest that by Serravallian times (∼13 Ma), the Northern Andes were separated from the Central Andes at ∼3°N by a fluvial system that flowed into the Amazon Basin through the Tatacoa Desert. This paleogeographic configuration would be similar to a Western Andean, or Marañon Portal. Late Miocene flattening of the subducting Nazca slab caused the eastward migration of the Miocene volcanic arc, so that starting at ∼4 Ma, large composite volcanoes were built up along the axis of today's Central Cordillera, closing this lowland Andean portal and altering the drainage patterns to resemble a modern configuration.

This article serves as the introduction to a special collection of commentary articles titled "The Power of Many: Opportunities and Challenges of Integrated, Coordinated, Open, and Networked (ICON) Science to Advance Geosciences". The ICON Collection is intended to be a resource for researchers across disciplines who are interested in intentionally doing science following a framework referred to as the ICON principles. To maximize its applicability across geoscience disciplines, the ICON Collection was designed to include one article from each of the 25 American Geophysical Union (AGU) section disciplines, and to date, 19 sections have articles prepared for submission to the Collection. This article (a) provides an overview of the ICON principles; (b) discusses the