Life Sciences Commons^™

Diversification Of Muroid Rodents Driven By The Late Miocene Global Cooling, Nelish Pradhan

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

Late Miocene, 8 to 6 million years ago (Ma), climatic changes brought about dramatic floral and faunal changes. Cooler and drier climates that prevailed in the Late Miocene led to expansion of grasslands and retreat of forests at a global scale. Palaeogeographic studies suggest a global vegetation change causing an abrupt increase in C4 plant biomass while C3 biomass decreased between 8 and 6 Ma. Subsequent cycles of cooler and drier climatic conditions during the Mid-Pliocene (3.5–3 Ma) and Pleistocene (2.8–2.5; 1.8–1.6; 1.0–0.8 Ma) also caused forests to retreat into isolated refugia which played an important role in events that …