Splendid and Seldom Isolated: The Paleobiogeography of Patagonia

WILF, PETER; CÚNEO, RUBÉN; ESCAPA, IGNACIO; POL, DIEGO; WOODBURNE, MICHAEL

ANNUAL REVIEW OF EARTH AND PLANETARY SCIENCES

ANNUAL REVIEWS

Lugar: Palo Alto, California; Año: 2013 vol. 41 p. 561 - 603

0084-6597

The idea that South America was an island continent over most of the Ceno-zoic, during which its unusual mammalian faunas evolved in isolation, isoutstandingly influential in biogeography. Although large numbers of re-cent fossil discoveries and related advances require that the original isola-tion concept be significantly modified, it is still repeated in much currentliterature. The persistence of the idea inspired us to present here an inte-grated paleobiogeographic account of mammals, reptiles, and plants fromthe Jurassic to the Paleogene of Patagonia, which has by far the richest fossilrecord on the continent. All three groups show distribution patterns that arebroadly consistent with South America?s long separation history, first fromLaurasia by the Late Jurassic, then from Africa and India-Madagascar duringthe late Early Cretaceous, and finally from Antarctica and Australia duringthe early-middle Eocene, after which ?isolation? finally commenced. Wehighlight areas of promising future research and provide an updated view ofSouth American isolation.