Miocene (Pt 34): The First Kangaroos in Australia

Ekaltadeta

During the Miocene, Australia was further south than it is today. However, it seems that the generally warmer climate of the early part of the epoch more than compensated for this, since we know that there were already coral reefs off the coasts of the main continent and also of New Zealand, which is far too cold for such things today. At the dawn of the epoch, the continent seems to have been largely covered by open woodland but as the world warmed in the Middle Miocene, and Australia edged northward, it became not only hotter, but wetter, until tropical and semi-tropical rainforests became the norm. It was only in the Late Miocene, around 10 million years or so ago, that the climate started drying again, especially in the interior, and the dense jungle began to die away, leading the way for the formation of today's Outback in the following, Pliocene epoch - although, even at the end of the Miocene, the coasts were more heavily forested than most of them are today.

How Big is a Small Whale?

The ongoing expansion of humanity has placed several animal species under threat of population decline or extinction, whether due to direct effects such as loss of wild spaces or more indirect ones such as climate change. (And a great many of these species are non-mammalian, of course, despite the focus of this blog). On the other hand, there have also been many conservation efforts that aim to restore, or at least preserve, species at risk. As I've previously described, for example, both black-footed ferrets and European bison went completely extinct in the wild during the 20th century, but are now back living in their original native habitats, if only in small numbers.

Not all such restoration efforts have been successful, and there can be many different reasons for this, not all of which are necessarily biological. Better then, of course, to try and prevent species from becoming endangered in the first place. For this reason, many species are protected even if they are not currently at risk. The more we can understand about these species, the better we will be able to keep them that way. 

Leaf-Eating Monkeys: Golden Langurs and Silvery Lutungs

Golden langur

During the Ice Ages, it is thought that the early grey langurs, ancestors of the modern sacred langur and its kin, sheltered in southern India where the climate allowed the warm forests on which they rely to continue to flourish. A second group of langurs, which had originally diverged from the grey langurs over five million years ago, sheltered instead further east, and their descendants include the spectacled and "limestone" langurs that still live in that area today. At some point, however, both moved northward again, and they met up somewhere near Assam in northeastern India.

In this region, they remained separated by mountains and rivers, but the barriers were not perfect, and there is some evidence that the two hybridised, leaving a genetic trace in the non-grey langurs of the region. Certainly, while these descendants are close enough to the spectacled and "limestone" langurs to be placed in the same genus, they form the oldest branch within it, somewhat distinct from the others.

The Dolphins of Switzerland

Kentriodon

The Mediterranean is very nearly an inland sea. Its only natural connection to the world's wider oceans is through the Strait of Gibraltar between Spain and Morocco, a passage just 13 km (8 miles) wide at its narrowest point and in places just 300 metres (1,000 feet) deep; pretty shallow as such things go. It's probably because of this that some of the larger whales that inhabit the Atlantic (blue whales, humpback whales, etc.) are rarely if ever seen venturing into its waters.

Dolphins are a different matter, with the majority of North Atlantic dolphin species also being commonly seen in the Mediterranean, albeit in some cases only in its most westerly waters. This includes some of the really big dolphins that we'd normally call "whales", such as the killer whale, and there are three species of genuine whale that live there, too. The connection between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic has not always been there, however; for a long time during the Late Miocene, the two bodies of water were separated by a land bridge between Spain and Morocco, entirely cutting the Mediterranean off until it ended in the cataclysmic Zanclean Flood. 

Bats in the Fynbos

Lesser horseshoe bat

From a human perspective, the ability of bats to navigate in pitch darkness through the use of biosonar is undoubtedly remarkable. Not only do they have to be able to avoid obstacles, but also, in the case of the insect-eating species, to locate and identify tiny prey items against the background. Their ability to do this is affected by a number of environmental factors, and the exact nature of the echolocation calls, and how the bat interprets them, may affect which of those factors have the most influence.

For example, the distance that a biosonar ping can travel is affected by both the temperature and humidity of the air through which it travels. Since there are bats in almost every habitat suitable for insects to live, we might expect the way that they use their sonar to vary depending on the local climate.