Ambassadors fromancient Asia

Charting the routes of Asia’s animals

ambassador travels to distant parts of the world and brings stories with them from their homeland. Today, Asia – Earth’s supercontinent – is home to many important animal groups that have deep genetic roots tied to the region’s ancient landscapes.

Finding the geographical localities of these species in compiling a map of their evolutionary origins is something of a puzzle. Our tools are primarily rare, often minimal, fossil remains, with additional insights offered by the relative distributions of related species; we can also employ genetic dating techniques to place their origins. These animal ambassadors may surprise you: Some of these species are no longer found in Asia, having travelled in different migratory trajectories; others are remembered only through their fossilised remains, leaving their stories for us to interpret millions of years later. Tyrannosaurusrex, known from a North American fossil that is around 66 million years old, has recently been subjected to a study that compares it to similar dinosaur species – the tyrannosaurids. By comparing a wide range of bone measurements, a new hypothesis has been formed that Tyrannosaurus, with its two closest relatives found only in Asian fossils, may actually have originally been located in Asia, and then migrated to the Americas.

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