Context: South America became linked to North America through the Isthmus of Panama during the Pliocene, bringing a nearly complete end to South America's distinctive marsupial faunas. The formation of the Isthmus had major consequences on global temperatures, since warm equatorial ocean currents were cut off and an Atlantic cooling cycle began, with cold Arctic and Antarctic waters dropping temperatures in the now-isolated Atlantic Ocean. Africa's collision with Europe formed the Mediterranean Sea, cutting off the remnants of the Tethys Ocean. Sea level changes exposed the land-bridge between Alaska and Asia. Near the end of the Pliocene, about 2.58 million years ago (the start of the Quaternary Period), the current ice age began. The polar regions have since undergone repeated cycles of glaciation and thaw, repeating every 40,000–100,000 years.

Question: What is the link between North and South America called?
Answer: the Isthmus of Panama

Question: In which period did North and South America become linked?
Answer: Pliocene

Question: The Pliocene saw the end of what fauna in South America?
Answer: marsupial faunas

Question: The Mediterranean was created by the collision of Europe and what?
Answer: Africa

Question: What period came after the Pliocene?
Answer: the Quaternary Period

Question: What completely ended South America's marsupial faunas?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: What formed to linked North and South America in the Quaternary Period?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: What began at the with the Pilocene?
Answer: Unanswerable

Question: How often does the cycle of rising sea levels repeat?
Answer: Unanswerable