Posted on 03/26/2016 11:21:19 AM PDT by JimSEA
For about 60 million years during the Eocene epoch, the Indian subcontinent was a huge island. Having broken off from the ancient continent of Gondwanaland, the Indian Tectonic Plate drifted toward Eurasia.
During that gradual voyage, the subcontinent saw a blossoming of exceptional wildlife, and when the trove of unique biodiversity finally made contact with bigger Eurasia, the exchange of animals and plants between these areas laid the foundations for countless modern species.
"Today, mainland Asia and India have all this unique biodiversity -- but did the mainland Asian biodiversity come from India, or did the Indian biodiversity come from other regions of Asia?" asked Jesse Grismer, doctoral candidate with the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas.
Grismer claims the answer depends on the organism in question.
"If you picked Asian freshwater crabs, you'd see they started in India and made their way to Asia, but if you picked dragon lizards you'd get the opposite answer," he said. "The opposing distribution patterns created a lot of conflict for a while. You'd see papers saying, 'Everything came from India,' and others saying, 'No, everything came from Indochina and Southeast Asia.' But they were looking at opposite ends of the same pattern, just with different animals."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
his is a map showing the distribution of Draconinae and the four biogeographic area (differently-colored borders) used in ancestral range reconstructions.
Gliding lizard (Draconinae) one of the neatest Southeast Asian lizards.
Your interest in Sundaland.
Wow, my cats would have hours of fun with one of those things!!
Which ever it was certainly Trumps fault./s
Didn’t Spanky and Our Gang do a song about this? “Sunda Will Never Be the Same”
Thanks for posting this. These types of posts are very helpful to those of us who are interested in science but don’t have the time to keep up with most new developments.
Thanks JimSEA.
The time and effort you put into making these associated links comments are very much appreciated.
Thank you.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/king-richard-iii-is-miracle-soccer-teams-most-valuable-player-1458915583
Love the threads that go beyond politics...or football. Thanks for lifting me out of the dai!y!
Awesome. Hours of great reading. Thanks!
I was watching a show not long ago about the Taman Negara National Park in Malaysia that contains the oldest rain forest in the world and is 300 million years old.
It showed an animated view of the island of India over 50 million years slipping by Malaysia as Malaysia essentially stood still in its present position.
I find it interesting that the world's oldest human DNA can be found in the Negrito people in these rain forests.
Not surprising. Thanks for the ping Sunken Civ
My pleasure.
The collision of the Indian and Asian plates is still producing the highest mountains in the world.
That it is, not to mention the Tibetan Plateau pushed up behind.
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