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Science 15 March 2002:
Vol. 295. no. 5562, pp. 2062 - 2065
DOI: 10.1126/science.1068700

Reports

Mammalian Dispersal at the Paleocene/Eocene Boundary

Gabriel J. Bowen,1* William C. Clyde,2 Paul L. Koch,1 Suyin Ting,34 John Alroy,5 Takehisa Tsubamoto,6 Yuanqing Wang,4 Yuan Wang4

A profound faunal reorganization occurred near the Paleocene/Eocene boundary, when several groups of mammals abruptly appeared on the Holarctic continents. To test the hypothesis that this event featured the dispersal of groups from Asia to North America and Europe, we used isotope stratigraphy, magnetostratigraphy, and quantitative biochronology to constrain the relative age of important Asian faunas. The extinct family Hyaenodontidae appeared in Asia before it did so in North America, and the modern orders Primates, Artiodactyla, and Perissodactyla first appeared in Asia at or before the Paleocene/Eocene boundary. These results are consistent with Asia being a center for early mammalian origination.

1 Department of Earth Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
2 Department of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH 03824-3589, USA.
3 Museum of Natural Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
4 Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Post Office Box 643, Beijing 100044, People's Republic of China.
5 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93101-3351, USA.
6 Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Inuyama 484-8506, Japan.
*   To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: gbowen{at}es.ucsc.edu


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)