Paleobiogeography

Paleobiogeography studies where ancient organisms lived and how their geographic distributions changed through time, using fossils and geological evidence.

Paleontology: The scientific study of ancient life, chiefly through fossils. Paleobiogeography uses paleontological evidence to map ancient organisms across space.
Continental drift: The gradual movement of continents across Earth's surface over geological time. Reconstructed continental positions explain why fossil ranges now separated were once connected.
Glossopteris: An extinct seed-fern genus whose fossils occur across several southern continents. Its broad Gondwanan fossil distribution supported the idea that those continents were once joined.
Historical biogeography: The study of how evolutionary and geological history produced organisms' geographic distributions. It interprets distribution patterns as outcomes of lineage history and changing geography.
Signor–Lipps effect: The apparent gradual disappearance of a taxon in fossil records because preservation and sampling are incomplete. It can make a species' last known location and timing differ from its true disappearance.
Biogeography: The study of the geographic distribution of organisms across space and time. Paleobiogeography applies biogeographic questions to organisms from Earth's past.
Vicariance: The splitting of a species' range when a geographic barrier divides its habitat. Plate movements and new barriers can divide once-continuous ancient distributions.
Mesosaurus: An extinct freshwater reptile known from fossils in southern Africa and South America. Its limited marine tolerance makes matching fossils across the South Atlantic evidence of former land continuity.
Phylogeography: The study of how genetic variation within species is distributed geographically. Phylogeography extends distribution-history questions to genetic evidence in living populations.
Fossil record: The preserved collection of fossils documenting past life across geological time. Uneven preservation and sampling leave uncertainty in mapped ancient ranges.

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