Fig. 2.

Phylogenetic, biogeographic, and stratigraphic relationships among basal species of the primate Teilhardina and closely related taxa. (a) Single most parsimonious tree recovered from phylogenetic analysis of 26 dental characters (for details see SI Text and SI Fig.3). In-group branches are color coded to reflect geographic occurrences of terminal taxa (red for Asia, yellow for North America, orange for Europe). (b) Most parsimonious pattern of dispersal for early species of Teilhardina given the tree topology depicted in a, superimposed on a paleogeographic map of the globe near the P/E boundary. Under this scenario, Teilhardina originated in Asia and dispersed across Beringia to occupy coastal regions of North America during the early part of the PETM (red pathway). A major fall in eustatic sea level later in the PETM allowed Teilhardina to disperse across the North Atlantic land bridge connecting Greenland with northwestern Europe (orange pathway). Increased precipitation in the Rocky Mountain Interior finally allowed Teilhardina to colonize the Bighorn Basin during zone Wa-0 (yellow pathway). (c–e) Correlation among sites in North America and Europe that yield fossils of the early Eocene primate Teilhardina. Lowest stratigraphic record of Teilhardina in each local section is indicated by a red dot. Green lines indicate correlation between Polecat Bench (c) in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming and Dormaal, Belgium (d), based on stratigraphic position of Teilhardina fossils with respect to the CIE (1). Blue line indicates correlation between Dormaal, Belgium (d), and the Red Hot local fauna of Mississippi (e) based on the type 1 sequence boundary separating sequence TP2.3 from the overlying sequence TE1.1, which was caused by an important fall in eustatic sea level early in the PETM (15, 17, 24, 25).