Evolution of Island Mammals Adaptation and Extinction of Placental Mammals on Islands

Evolution on islands differs in a number of important ways from evolution on mainland areas. Over millions of years of isolation, exceptional and sometimes bizarre mammals evolved on islands, such as pig-sized elephants and hippos, giant rats and gorilla-sized lemurs that would have been formidable to their mainland ancestors.

Evolution of Island Mammals, Second Edition, provides an updated and expanded overview of the current knowledge on fossil island mammals worldwide, ranging from the Oligocene to the onset of the Holocene. The book addresses evolutionary processes and key aspects of insular mammal biology, exemplified by a variety of fossil species.

Readers familiar with the first edition will find here a host of updated and enhanced material, including:

• An entirely new chapter on the island rule
• Updated and expanded theoretical chapters
• Updated and improved taxonomic information
• Extensive coverage of new discoveries
• Body masses or body size indices for most extinct island mammals
• New figures visualizing the richness of the fossil record

This accessible and richly illustrated textbook is written for graduate level students and professional researchers in evolutionary biology, palaeontology, biogeography, zoology, and ecology.

Alexandra van der Geer is a researcher at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Leiden, the Netherlands. She publishes on various subjects, including insularity, primatology and the relation between humans and animals. Among her previous books are Animals in Stone and Hoe dieren op eilanden evolueren.   

George Lyras is a member of the faculty of Geology and Geoenvironment of the University of Athens, Greece. His research focuses primarily on the evolution of carnivores, brain evolution and biogeography of insular mammals.   

John de Vos is honorary research associate and former curator of the Dubois Collection and the Collection of Pleistocene mammal fossils from the Netherlands and the North Sea at Naturalis Biodiversity Center, the Netherlands. His expertise and field of research include the taxonomic, systematic, geographic and stratigraphic research of the Pleistocene mammals of Southeast Asia in relation to fossil humans and fossil island faunas. 

Part I

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 History of Island Studies

Chapter 3 Factors that Influence Island Faunas

Part II

Chapter 4 Cyprus

Chapter 5 Crete

Chapter 6 Gargano

Chapter 7 Sicily

Chapter 8 Malta

Chapter 9 Sardinia and Corsica

Chapter 10 The Balearic Islands

Chapter 11 Madagascar

Chapter 12 Java

Chapter 13 Flores

Chapter 14 Sulawesi

Chapter 15 The Philippines

Chapter 16 Japan

Chapter 17 The Southern and Central Ryukyu Islands

Chapter 18 The Californian Channel Islands

Chapter 19 The Greater Antilles

Chapter 20 The Lesser Antilles

Part III

Chapter 21 An Overview of Endemic Species

Chapter 22 Speciation Processes in Island Environments

Chapter 23 The Island Rule: Dwarfism and Gigantism

Chapter 24 Parallel Patterns and Trends

Chapter 25 Extinction of Island Mammals

References

Index

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