2025/11/27 by Lény Montheil, Alexis Licht, K. Christopher Beard +7 · 2 voices
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology #Primate Behavior and Ecology
paper · doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2025.105352
openalex publication_date 2025/11/27 · openalex created_date 2025/11/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
During the middle and late Eocene, Asian terrestrial mammals dispersed to Europe, while primates and rodents dispersed across the 500-to-2000 km wide Neotethys Ocean and the 1500-to-2000 km wide Atlantic Ocean to colonize Afro-Arabia and South America. This study explores how these mammals have achieved such remarkable and enigmatic dispersals. We present high-resolution paleogeographic models for the middle to late Eocene based on updated plate kinematic reconstructions, paleo-bathymetry and paleo-topography data. With this, we evaluate landmass configurations and connectivity that may have facilitated faunal exchanges from Asia toward Europe, Afro-Arabia, and South America and discuss dispersal mechanisms between these biogeographic provinces. Our reconstructions reveal that during the Bartonian (~40–38 Ma), an overland dispersal corridor between Asia and Balkanatolia became available to terrestrial mammals and acted as a pivotal pathway for Asian faunas dispersing toward western Europe and Afro-Arabia. We identified two Balkanatolian island-hopping routes across the Western Neotethys potentially enabling the dispersal of small-bodied Asian primates, rodents and artiodactyls to Afro-Arabia. Alternatively, these taxa may have rafted across the Central Neotethys. By ~34 Ma, Balkanatolia fully connected with Western Europe, opening a southern “Grande Coupure” route for Asian faunas. In the Atlantic, we identify long-distance rafting as the most plausible mechanism for the 40–34 Ma transoceanic dispersal of the Asian-originated primates and rodents from Afro-Arabia to South America despite the likely presence of sparse islands along the Walvis Ridge and the Rio Grande Rise.