Three million years ago, the rise of the Panamanian land bridge connected the American continents and unleashed an astonishing animal encounter. The emergence of the narrow, 400-mile-long Isthmus of Panama is one of the most important events in Earth’s history – and one of the least understood. In this show, we reveal the story of how the area comprising the current-day Republic of Panama connected two continents – each with its own full-blown animal kingdom – separated two oceans, and transformed the world as we know it. It was an event of epic proportions, but what exactly happened? The details of how and when the continents merged and its impact on the living – why some animals succeeded and others went extinct – are finally becoming clear.