Biogeography, Time and Place. Distributions, Barriers, and Islands

these 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.