The tectonic movement and mountain-building that created the Tibetan Plateau – as well as subsequent climate change – have shaped the evolution of Asian mammals over the last 66 million years, a new study has found.
For the study – published in peer-reviewed journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday – the researchers built a suite of more than 2,000 historical biogeographic models comprising over 3,000 species in Asia and adjacent continents to investigate their evolution. Bruce Patterson, study co-author and a curator emeritus at the museum, said Asia did not have the most mammal species in the world, but it was a crossroads for connections to other continents, including North America, Africa, Europe and Australasia.
The study also found that colonisation – or mammals spreading from southern Asia to the Himalayas and the Hengduan area – has been the dominant mode of species accumulation over time from these two mountainous hotspots.