The Afro-Arabian Component in the Levantine Mammalian Fauna—a Short Biogeographical Review

The dramatic transformation of the southern Lev ant during the Miocene from a tropical domain into a southern province of the Palearctic region is what makes this region so interesting and focuses the attention of many scholars. Unfortunately, only partof those events can be traced in the fossil record. The great diversity of the southern Levantine biotas and its extreme biogeographical heterogeneity, the existence of animal species and human forms originating in distant biotic provinces, is primarily the product of the Afro-Eurasian Neogene-Quatemary biotic interchanges, resulting from the drawing up of the northern edge of the Afro-Arabian continent against the margin of the Eurasian continental body by subduction along the present Anatolian-Iranian tectonic suture line. The kaleidoscopic admixture of Palearctic, Paleotropic and Saharo-Arabo-Sindian elements changes constantly during the Neogene and the Quarternary periods, disposing now and then of a new biogeographical configuration. Indeed, ...