Biogeography, Time and Place. Distributions, Barriers, and Islands
Willem Renemathese fields have been limited. Prejudices that the fossil record is too scattered and
poorly preserved, and that zoologists think on irrelevant evolutionary time scales,
have often formed barriers in their cooperation. In this book we hope to show that
even in poorly fossilising taxa, the inclusion of geological data in the analysis can
improve the outcome.
Patterns of biodiversity have long attracted the attention of both biologists and
palaeontologists. Although many taxonomic groups have their origins in the
Palaeozoic, their current distribution patterns are usually dominated by Cenozoic
overprints, making even the breakup of Gondwana (Late Jurassic) relevant to
understanding present distributional patterns. The inclusion of geological data in
any analysis of present-day distribution patterns leads to a better understanding
of them.