Evolution and Paleontology Studies

Paleontologists studying mammal evolution reconstruct how more than 6,000 living species—and many thousands of extinct ones—arose, diversified, and went extinct across roughly 180 million years of Earth history, drawing on fossil evidence alongside molecular phylogenies to trace lineages through time. By measuring diversification rates and mapping biogeographic patterns, researchers can identify when and where bursts of speciation occurred, such as the explosive adaptive radiation of placental mammals following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, and what ecological or climatic conditions drove them. Cenozoic climate shifts, including the cooling and drying of the Eocene-Oligocene transition and the Pleistocene glacial cycles, left clear signatures in the mammalian record, yet the precise mechanisms linking environmental change to speciation and extinction remain actively debated. Current work focuses on integrating paleobiological data with phylogenetic comparative methods to disentangle whether observed patterns reflect genuine biological responses to climate, ecological opportunity, or biases in the fossil record itself.

Works

268,026

Total citations

1,601,358

Keywords

Mammal EvolutionPhylogenetic Comparative AnalysisDiversification RatesAdaptive RadiationPaleobiologySpeciation and Extinction