Research group suggests Madagascar's unique animals arrived on rafts
- (PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the island of Madagascar was first visited by people, some two thousand years ago, there has been speculation about the unique plants and animals that live on the world’s fourth largest island; one where roughly ninety percent of the wildlife is found nowhere else. For many years, it was believed they came to be there during the time when the island was still physically connected to Africa, but that reasoning has fallen by the wayside as it has been shown that the island separated some 88 million years ago, while most of the animals that live there didn’t arrive till just 60 million years ago, forcing evolutionary scientists to search for other explanations. Now new evidence by an international group of researchers is proposing that the animals got there by floating on rafts during a time when prevailing currents would have made the journey more plausible. They have published a paper on their ideas in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
I couldn't have made this up, but yeh that makes sense.
- (PhysOrg.com) -- Ever since the island of Madagascar was first visited by people, some two thousand years ago, there has been speculation about the unique plants and animals that live on the world’s fourth largest island; one where roughly ninety percent of the wildlife is found nowhere else. For many years, it was believed they came to be there during the time when the island was still physically connected to Africa, but that reasoning has fallen by the wayside as it has been shown that the island separated some 88 million years ago, while most of the animals that live there didn’t arrive till just 60 million years ago, forcing evolutionary scientists to search for other explanations. Now new evidence by an international group of researchers is proposing that the animals got there by floating on rafts during a time when prevailing currents would have made the journey more plausible. They have published a paper on their ideas in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
I couldn't have made this up, but yeh that makes sense.