Cenozoic climate change influences mammalian evolutionary dynamics.
Global climate change is having profound impacts on the natural world. However, climate influence on faunal dynamics at macroevolutionary scales remains poorly understood. In this paper we investigate the influence of climate over deep time on the diversity patterns of Cenozoic North American mammals. We use factor analysis to identify temporally correlated assemblages of taxa, or major evolutionary faunas that we can then study in relation to climatic change over the past 65 million years. These taxa can be grouped into six consecutive faunal associations that show some correspondence with the qualitative mammalian chronofaunas of previous workers. We also show that the diversity pattern of most of these chronofaunas can be correlated with the stacked deep-sea benthic foraminiferal oxygen isotope (δ(18)O) curve, which strongly suggests climatic forcing of faunal dynamics over a large macroevolutionary timescale. This study demonstrates the profound influence of climate on the diversity patterns of North American terrestrial mammals over the Cenozoic.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. francisco_figueirido_castillo@brown.edu
Borja
B
Figueirido
Christine M
CM
Janis
Juan A
JA
Pérez-Claros
Miquel
M
De Renzi
Paul
P
Palmqvist
D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D057231:Climate Change / Q000266:history*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D049690:History, Ancient; D008322:Mammals / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D009656:North America; D010103:Oxygen Isotopes; D012044:Regression Analysis; D013997:Time Factors
D010103:Oxygen Isotopes