Mammals arrived in Madagascar on logs

2010/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Eboluzioa
• Zoologia
• Ekologia

Based on and modeled on a model of predictions and climate studies, a paleoclimatologist at Purdue University has shown that mammals on the island of Madagascar reached the sea in fallen trunks.

The arrival of the continental animals on the trunks is one of the few colonization routes of the islands. In the case of the island of Madagascar, however, many experts doubted that they could arrive this way, since the currents of the channel existing between the island and Africa move in the opposite direction. Therefore, rather than approaching Madagascar, they would move away from there, without wanting it, the animals that could be in some trunk fallen to the sea.

Today yes, but not about 60 million years ago. Purdue University researcher has discovered that Madagascar and Africa were then 1,650 kilometers south. At this location, the water currents of the canal were different, so they pushed the trunks fallen to the sea in Africa and, of course, the animals that could be on them to Madagascar.