Out of Asia

摘要

Asia was the mammalian Garden of Eden where animals such as primates and the ancestors of horses and antelopes evolved before spreading east to conquer the world. The idea that Asia may have been a cradle of mammalian evolution has been popular with palaeontologists. But the fossil record only reveals that the distinctive mammals of the Palaeocene epoch, which began 65 million years ago, were replaced across the northern hemisphere around 55 million years ago by animals more akin to those we see today. How and why the more modern mammals came to dominate has remained a mystery.