Diversification of mammals from the Miocene of Spain

The mammalian fossil record of Spain is long and taxonomically well resolved, offering the most complete record of faunal change for the Neogene of Europe. We evaluated changes in diversification, composition, trophic structure, and size structure of large mammals over the middle and late Miocene with methods applied to this record for the first time, including ordination of fossil localities to improve temporal resolution and estimation of confidence intervals on taxa temporal ranges. By contrast, analysis within the traditional Mammal Neogene (MN) biochronology obscures important aspects of diversification. We used inferred temporal ranges of species and evaluated per capita rates of origination, extinction, diversification, and turnover over 0.5-Myr time intervals. Three periods of significant faunal change occurred between 12.0 and 5.5 Ma: (1) From 12.0 to 10.5 Ma, elevated origination rates led to an increase in diversity without significant change in ecological structure. Immigran...西班牙的哺乳动物化石记录历史悠久且分类学分辨率完善，为欧洲新近纪提供了迄今最为完整的动物群变化记录。我们首次针对该记录开展研究，评估了中中新世至晚中新世时期大型哺乳动物的多样性、组成、营养结构与体型结构的演化变化，所用方法包括通过化石产地排序提升时间分辨率，以及估算类群时间范围的置信区间。与之形成对比的是，传统哺乳动物新近纪（Mammal Neogene, MN）生物年代学框架内的分析，会掩盖诸多重要的多样性变化特征。我们基于物种的推断时间范围，以每0.5百万年为时间间隔，评估了物种起源、灭绝、多样性演化以及类群更替的单位速率。在12.0至5.5百万年前期间，共存在三个显著的动物群变化阶段：(1) 12.0至10.5百万年前，起源速率升高带来了多样性增长，但生态结构未发生显著变化；迁入类群……