Dataset Information

Synchronous turnover of flora, fauna, and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in Asia.

ABSTRACT: The Eocene-Oligocene Boundary (~34 million years ago) marks one of the largest extinctions of marine invertebrates in the world oceans and of mammalian fauna in Europe and Asia in the Cenozoic era. A shift to a cooler climate across this boundary has been suggested as the cause of this extinction in the marine environment, but there is no manifold evidence for a synchronous turnover of flora, fauna and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in a single terrestrial site in Asia to support this hypothesis. Here we report new data of magnetostratigraphy, pollen and climatic proxies in the Asian interior across the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary; our results show that climate change forced a turnover of flora and fauna, suggesting there was a change from large-size perissodactyl-dominant fauna in forests under a warm-temperate climate to small rodent/lagomorph-dominant fauna in forest-steppe in a dry-temperate climate across the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary. These data provide a new terrestrial record for this significant Cenozoic environmental event.

SUBMITTER: Sun J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4264005 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Synchronous turnover of flora, fauna, and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in Asia.

Sun Jimin J Ni Xijun X Bi Shundong S Wu Wenyu W Ye Jie J Meng Jin J Windley Brian F BF

Scientific reports 20141212

The Eocene-Oligocene Boundary (~34 million years ago) marks one of the largest extinctions of marine invertebrates in the world oceans and of mammalian fauna in Europe and Asia in the Cenozoic era. A shift to a cooler climate across this boundary has been suggested as the cause of this extinction in the marine environment, but there is no manifold evidence for a synchronous turnover of flora, fauna and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in a single terrestrial site in Asia to support this ...[more]

PMID: 25501388

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Project description:Tropical Africa is home to an astonishing biodiversity occurring in a variety of ecosystems. Past climatic change and geological events have impacted the evolution and diversification of this biodiversity. During the last two decades, around 90 dated molecular phylogenies of different clades across animals and plants have been published leading to an increased understanding of the diversification and speciation processes generating tropical African biodiversity. In parallel, extended geological and palaeoclimatic records together with detailed numerical simulations have refined our understanding of past geological and climatic changes in Africa. To date, these important advances have not been reviewed within a common framework. Here, we critically review and synthesize African climate, tectonics and terrestrial biodiversity evolution throughout the Cenozoic to the mid-Pleistocene, drawing on recent advances in Earth and life sciences. We first review six major geo-climatic periods defining tropical African biodiversity diversification by synthesizing 89 dated molecular phylogeny studies. Two major geo-climatic factors impacting the diversification of the sub-Saharan biota are highlighted. First, Africa underwent numerous climatic fluctuations at ancient and more recent timescales, with tectonic, greenhouse gas, and orbital forcing stimulating diversification. Second, increased aridification since the Late Eocene led to important extinction events, but also provided unique diversification opportunities shaping the current tropical African biodiversity landscape. We then review diversification studies of tropical terrestrial animal and plant clades and discuss three major models of speciation: (i) geographic speciation via vicariance (allopatry); (ii) ecological speciation impacted by climate and geological changes, and (iii) genomic speciation via genome duplication. Geographic speciation has been the most widely documented to date and is a common speciation model across tropical Africa. We conclude with four important challenges faced by tropical African biodiversity research: (i) to increase knowledge by gathering basic and fundamental biodiversity information; (ii) to improve modelling of African geophysical evolution throughout the Cenozoic via better constraints and downscaling approaches; (iii) to increase the precision of phylogenetic reconstruction and molecular dating of tropical African clades by using next generation sequencing approaches together with better fossil calibrations; (iv) finally, as done here, to integrate data better from Earth and life sciences by focusing on the interdisciplinary study of the evolution of tropical African biodiversity in a wider geodiversity context.

Dataset Information

Synchronous turnover of flora, fauna, and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in Asia.

Publications

Synchronous turnover of flora, fauna, and climate at the Eocene-Oligocene Boundary in Asia.

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