Lemurs reach Madagascar
A few primates cross 400 kilometres of open ocean, probably on a raft of vegetation, and find an empty island.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 10 million years
- Known to
- ± 5 million years
- Era
- Eocene, Cenozoic
Madagascar has been isolated since the Cretaceous, so every land mammal on it arrived by sea. Molecular dating places the lemur founding event in the Eocene, and palaeocurrent modelling shows that ocean currents at the time ran from Africa toward Madagascar, making the crossing feasible on a storm-torn mat of vegetation — a journey that would be almost impossible under today's currents. From that single founding population come the hundred-plus lemur species, filling roles taken elsewhere by monkeys, woodpeckers and even, in the extinct giant forms, by grazing ungulates.