Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2017
During the last two decades, vertebrate palaeontological research in Australia has entered a new phase of development, with more investigators backed by a significant increase in financial support from government and private financial sources. The consequences of this accelerated phase of investigation has been rapid growth in information about vertebrate diversity, phylogenetic relationships, biocorrelation, palaeobiogeography and palaeoecology. In this review, we consider highlights of the developing late Mesozoic- late Cenozoic record of Australian terrestrial mammals, in part because the Cenozoic record of these is better known than that for any other group of vertebrates and in part because the ability to infer aspects of palaeohabitats from anatomical features is perhaps greatest for this group.
Most modern orders of mammals underwent adaptive radiations between the Late Cretaceous and late Paleogene subsequent to the Early to mid-Cretaceous diversification of angiosperms. For this reason many aspects of the history and structure of Australia's mammalian herbivores reflect the requirements of harvesting and consuming particular groups of flowering plants. In so far as this correlation holds, it is possible to infer from the structure of the dentition of extinct herbivores aspects of the vegetation upon which they fed. Although experimental studies (e.g. Sanson, 1989) of the function of the teeth of living Australian herbivores are few, deductive analysis of the diets of extinct forms based on diets of living species enables hypotheses about the timing of key mid-late Tertiary changes in the structure of Australia's terrestrial communities.
Higher-level systematic nomenclatures used here follow those of Aplin & Archer (1987; marsupials), Watts & Aslin (1981; rodents) and Walton & Richardson (1989; bats and other mammal groups). Biostratigraphic nomenclature, unless otherwise indicated, follows those of Woodburne et al. (1985) and Archer et al. (1989, 1991). The positions of the major fossil sites discussed in this chapter are shown in Figure 6.1 and the current understanding of the ages of the sites is shown in Figure 6.2.
AUSTRALIAN MAMMAL DIVERSITY
There are 12 groups of ordinally distinct endemic Australian mammals.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.