Terrestrial mammals provide evidence for repeated land connections between Europe, several Mediterranean islands and northern Africa during the Tertiary. The distribution of mammals substantiates palaeogeographic reconstructed postulated by tectonic analysis, according to which Mallorca, Sardinia and the Calabro-Peloritan massif were connected with southern France and Spain in the Eocene and early Oligocene. A connection of Mallorca and possibly Sardinia with Africa in the Oligocene is also shown. In the middle Miocene a migration took place from the Balkans to the Gargano promontory, which subsequently became an island. At this age faunal migrations between Africa, Spain and Italy may possibly have taken place, but this has not been definitely proved. During the Messinian, faunal interchange occurred between Morocco and Spain and between Tunisia and Sicily; other faunal migrations took place between the European mainland, the Balearics and Sardinia. The occurrence of taxa of African origin in Greece suggests a late Miocene faunal interchange directly across the eastern Mediterranean. However, most of the taxa were also recorded from Anatolia, so that the migration could have taken place into the Mediterranean from the east. A notable exception is Hystrix, first recorded from the Vallesian of Morrocco (Marceau) and not recorded from Anatolia. © 1979.
