Using sophisticated equipment, David Kohlstedt has recreated the pressure, temperature and chemical conditions in the Earth’s mantle, which humans cannot observe directly. His findings have laid the basis for understanding many of the processes that drive the planet’s dynamics.

Scientists have observed and learned to use subatomic phenomena on the earth’s surface. Now, for the first time, they can see similar things deep within the planet.

Fluids trapped within the stones are helping researchers reconstruct the deep history of the continent, and eventually maybe others.

“After a diamond captures something, from that moment until millions of years later in my lab, that material stays the same. We can look at diamonds as time capsules, as messengers from a place we have no other way of seeing.”

The creation of the narrow isthmus that joins North and South America changed not just the world map, but the circulation of oceans, the course of biologic evolution, and probably global climate. Scientists try to decipher the story behind its formation.