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Gondwanan break-up: legacies of a lost world?

This paper examines the biogeographic and evolutionary consequences of the break up of the Gondwanan supercontinent during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic. This work represents a 'paradigm shift' because it proposes that two apparently competing models for the sequence of continental fragmentation (i.e. Gondwana was first divided into western and eastern portions, or Gondwana was first divided into Africa and eastern Gondwana+South America) can be reconciled into a single, 'two-stage' model. This resolves a large body of apparently contradictory biogeographic evidence from the Cretaceous. This paper also demonstrates that their is a significant bias built into many molecular studies of biogeographic history, which causes such studies to overestimate the frequency of trans-oceanic dispersal of terrestrial organisms. These two important components have led this paper to be relatively highly cited since it is of relevance to both palaeobiologists and researchers working on extant forms.