On Monday, May 30, 2022 at 8:13:01 PM UTC-4, DD'eDeN aka note/nickname/alas_my_loves wrote:
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-extremely-interesting-animals-that-unfortunately-went-extinct?ch=10&oid=116876061&share=4f25f029&srid=RPhZF&target_type=question
Good evidence that Homo was not island hopping around the Mediterranean between 5ma and 5ka.
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The ancestor of Myotragus likely arrived in the Balearic Islands during the Messinian stage of the late Miocene at a time at which the Strait of Gibraltar closed and the Mediterranean Sea evaporated, reducing sea level within the basin by 800–1200
metres, in an event called the Messinian salinity crisis, allowing a land connection between the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearics.[14]
Later on, the opening of the straits and the massive salt water inflow isolated the animal populations, which diversified in the new Mediterranean islands created by tectonic forces. At the same time, climatic change replaced the vegetation of
subtropical type with the present one of Mediterranean type, forcing Myotragus to develop drastic changes in its feeding and set of teeth.
Myotragus initially only colonized the island of Mallorca. On Ibiza a strange ecosystem without terrestrial mammals developed in which birds and bats were the main vertebrates, while in Menorca a giant rabbit, Nuralagus rex evolved that covered the same
niche as Myotragus in Mallorca.[15] With the level of the sea falling due to glacial cycles during the Pleistocene, Mallorca and Menorca were periodically connected and Myotragus replaced the great Menorcan lagomorphs.[16] Both islands separated again at
the beginning of the Holocene.
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