The Geography of Evolution and the Evolution of Geography

Abstract

Insights into the geography of life have played a fundamental role in motivating major developments in evolutionary biology. The focus here is on outlining some of these major developments, specifically in the context of paleontology, by emphasizing the significance of geographic isolation and allopatric speciation, punctuated equilibria, and the Turnover Pulse Hypothesis to evolutionary theory. One of the major debates in evolution concerns the relative contributions of abiotic and biotic factors to macroevolution, and each one of these developments increasingly suggested that it was climatic and geologic factors, rather than competition, that played the primary role in motivating macroevolution. New technical developments, including in the area of Geographic Information Systems, allow continued detailed testing of the relative roles that biotic as opposed to abiotic factors play in causing evolution, and some of the work in this area will also be described.

The extinct shark, Ptychodus (Elasmobranchii, Ptychodontidae) in the Upper Cretaceous of central-western Russia—The road to easternmost peri-Tethyan seas

“…Valuable information on paleogeographic and climatic stressors driving the distribution and evolution of a fauna over long temporal scales can be inferred from its paleobiogeographic trends ( Brooks and McLennan, 1991 ; Brown and Lomolino, 1998 ; Lieberman, 2000 ; Myers and Lieberman, 2010 ; Maduna et al, 2020 ). Studies on spatial and temporal distribution patterns based on fossil occurrences thus play a key role in understanding evolutionary processes, as well as in estimating conservation potential, for land and marine fauna communities (e.g., Lieberman, 2008 , 2012 ; Louys, 2012 ; Peterson and Lieberman, 2012 ; Cranbrook and Piper, 2013 ; Dombrosky, 2015 ; Maduna et al, 2020 ).…”