Data and scripts from: Most mammals do not wander: few species escape continental endemism

Terrestrial mammals are found nearly everywhere on earth. Yet, most taxa are endemic to a single continent; geological, evolutionary, ecological or physiological filters constrain geographic distributions. Here, we synthesize data on geography, taxonomy, lineage age, dispersal, body size, and diet for >4,000 terrestrial mammals prior to detectable human-mediated biodiversity losses and quantify factors correlated with the likelihood of dispersal between continents. We confirm the uniqueness of being on multiple continents: excluding humans and commensals, only 260 mammals are found on two continents, while six span three or more continents (the red deer, red fox, brown bear, least weasel, and common bent-wing bat), and just a single species—the lion—once had a geographic range that included four continents. Clearly, the challenges of colonizing and persisting on multiple continents are severe. No single characteristic enables taxa to be on more than one continent. Rather, a suite of ..., Data Collection
We used the updated Body Mass of Late Quaternary Mammals dataset (Smith et al. 2003) to version 11.1. See supplemental information of manuscript for deatils. We additionally collected contitnet of family origin (\"familyOrigin_Oct2024.csv\"). We also added in generic first appearance from the PaleobioDB (see Analysis.R) and Faurby et al. 2018 (PHYLACINE). We also combined data about geographic range, home range, and age of dispersal from Jones et al. 2009 (PanTHERIA), natural ranges from Faurby et al. 2018 (PHYLACINE), as well as generation length from Pacifici et al. 2013. We do not republish existing datasets here.
Data cleaning
Data for Analysis
We removed all species records not on a continent (i.e., insular and marine species). We also removed non-native species, including introduced and domesticated species. This is in \"Analysis.R\" under \"TRIM DATA\".
Since we do not include previously published data, the script “Analysis.R” includes instructions for finding and ..., , # Data and scripts for Most mammals do not wander: little taxonomic overlap among continents

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv69](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1g1jwsv69)

## Description of the data and file structure

### Files and variables

#### File: familyOrigin_Oct2024.xlsx

**Description:** A dataset of mammalian families and the continent of first fossil occurrence to as of Oct. 2024. Sheet 1 has the data; Sheet 2 \"origin of place reference\" contains the references used to determine continent of origin for the family; Sheet 3 \"origin of date reference\" contains the references for the first occurrence of that family. Empty cells indicate that no data was available at the time of the dataset's creation.

##### Variables for Sheet 1

* family: Accepted mammalian family based off Wilson & Reeder 2005 or the literature
* continent: Continent where the family originated, which can be Eurasia, Africa, Australia, North America (North.America), or South America (South.America).
* c...,