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Faunal turnovers of Palaeogene mammals from the Mongolian Plateau

Nature volume 394, pages 364–367 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

Most orders and many families of modern mammals were established during the Palaeogene. Mammalian evolution during this period of time has been correlated with global climatic events1,2,3,4, although the timing, mode and scale of such a climate–evolution link remain debatable1,5,6. The Palaeogene global climate was step-punctuated by a warming across the Palaeocene/Eocene boundary about 55 Myr ago and a cool-off throughout the late Eocene and early Oligocene epochs1,2,7,8,9,10. The most severe cooling was at 33.5 Myr, slightly after the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, and was characterized by a drop in the mean annual temperature and by changes in vegetation from Eocene dense forests to Oligocene more open country5. Here we analyse 33 Palaeogene mammal faunas from the Mongolian Plateau of China and Mongolia. There is a distinct pattern of faunal turnovers: perissodactyl-dominant faunas of the Eocene were abruptly replaced by rodent/lagomorph-dominant faunas of the Oligocene. We interpret the turnovers as having been effected by global climatic shifts and name the prominent biotic reorganization across the Eocene/Oligocene boundary the Mongolian Remodelling, which correlates to the European Grande Coupure.

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Figure 1: Location map of 33 Palaeogene faunas from the Mongolian Plateau.
Figure 2: Correlation of local faunas by clustering (see Methods), local mammal ages, and distributions of important mammal families from the Mongolian Palaeogene. Dashed lines indicate no records.
Figure 3: Changes in faunal composition and dental morphology.
Figure 4: Morphologies of the first right upper and lower molars (anterior to the right; some are photographically reversed; not to scale) of the main Palaeogene rodent families from the Mongolian Plateau.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Wang for unpublished data; R. H. Tedford, X. Wang, M. Coombs, G.Gould, K. Doyle and the OEB discussion group of the University of Massachusetts for discussions; and J.-L. Hartenberger for comments. This work was supported by the NSF, the National Geograhic Society, the University of Massachusetts and the American Museum of Natural History.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology and Graduate Program in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 01003, Massachusetts, USA

    Jin Meng

  2. Department of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, 10024, New York, USA

    Malcolm C. McKenna

Authors
  1. Jin Meng
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  2. Malcolm C. McKenna
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Correspondence to Jin Meng.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information 1

Faunal lists of 33 main Palaeogene local faunas from the Mongolian Plateau. (HTML 55 kb)

Supplementary Information 2

Distributions of species across 33 Palaeogene faunas from the Mongolian Plateau. (XLS 227 kb)

Supplementary Information 3

Measurements of molar teeth of mammal species from 33 Palaeogene faunas of the Mongolian Plateau. (XLS 83 kb)

Supplementary Information 3

Full captions for the excel documents appendix2.xls and appendix3.xls (HTML 2 kb)

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Meng, J., McKenna, M. Faunal turnovers of Palaeogene mammals from the Mongolian Plateau. Nature 394, 364–367 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/28603

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