The last land. A history of mammalogy in New Guinea
Abstract
[Excerpt] After Greenland, New Guinea is the second largest island on Earth. It is a region of exceptional biodiversity, as its eastern part alone—the independent nation of Papua New Guinea, ranks twelfth among nations for biodiversity (Williams, 2001). New Guinea’s indigenous mammalian fauna consists of four major clades: monotremes (Tachyglossidae), marsupials (Australidelphia), murids (Muridae), and bats (Microchiroptera), each of which has a differing zoogeographic history in the New Guinean region (Flannery, 1995a). New Guinea lies east of Wallace’s Line, and its northwestern and southern parts form the northern margin of the Australian Plate, while the rest of the island is largely made up of rocks of oceanic crust and island arc origin (Baldwin et al., 2012). Unlike Australia, which is dry and flat, New Guinea is rain-soaked and mountainous, creating a perfect natural laboratory to investigate how faunas with a common ancestry evolve under different conditions.
