Pre-human Origins of Madagascar Grasslands: A Phylogenetic Literature Review

This dataset contains node and stem age estimates for endemic and non-endemic grassland plant species and genera from Madagascar, extracted from four large, recently published phylogenetic trees. For each taxon group, custom R scripts were used to systematically extract node ages from each tree, with genus-level fallback applied where species were absent from the phylogeny. For the ensemble tree (Forest_100trees), median ages across 100 replicates were calculated to account for phylogenetic uncertainty. The compiled results provide a robust comparative framework for understanding the evolutionary history and conservation value of Madagascar’s grassland flora.