Abstract
Given the Indian block’s ancient association with Gondwana and subsequent separation from Africa, then Madagascar, then the Seychelles, vicariance has often been invoked to explain the distribution of some of India’s extant biota that might have had Gondwanan origins. Here I review phylogenetic studies and fossil data of Indian tetrapods to ascertain the contribution of dispersal and vicariance in shaping the assemblage. Paleogene dispersal into India accounts for almost all of the tetrapod clades in India. Vicariance is invoked for three groups, all fossorial; the caecilians, the frog family Nasikabatrachidae and the blindsnake family Gerrhopilidae. This review concludes that practically all of India’s Late Cretaceous tetrapod fauna (of Gondwanan origin) was extirpated during the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, which may have been exacerbated by the coeval volcanism associated with the emplacement of the Deccan Trap large igneous province. Subsequently, the tetrapod fauna was built up by incoming elements as India advanced towards Asia, docking with the continent in the Paleogene.
Highlights
In the context of plate tectonics the Indian subcontinent is interesting given that most of this landmass was part of the Gondwana supercontinent through much of its geological history (Karanth 2006, Karanth 2015)
The initiation of Gondwana breakup around 160 million years ago (Ma) and the resulting separation of the landmass constituting India and Madagascar ( Indomadagascar) from Africa around 120 Ma was the earliest vicariance event experienced by Indian biota (Fig. 1a, 1b)
The recent paper by Feng et al (2017) is of much interest, as it included 44 of the 55 global frog families and, importantly, all of those found in India. Their agecalibrated phylogeny based on 20 fossil calibrations suggests that most of the frog families that are endemic to India, and those distributed in Eurasia, diverged from their African and Malagasy counterparts around the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary (66 Ma)
Summary
In the context of plate tectonics the Indian subcontinent is interesting given that most of this landmass was part of the Gondwana supercontinent through much of its geological history (Karanth 2006, Karanth 2015). The initiation of Gondwana breakup around 160 million years ago (Ma) and the resulting separation of the landmass constituting India and Madagascar ( Indomadagascar) from Africa around 120 Ma was the earliest vicariance event experienced by Indian biota (Fig. 1a, 1b). Recent global time-trees of a range of tetrapods are reviewed here to better understand the relative contributions of dispersal and vicariance, in the context of plate tectonics, in shaping the biotic composition of India.
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