Figure 3. Timetable summarizing major paleogeographical and paleoclimatic events relevant to the biogeographic history of Madagascar.

Table includes a non-exhaustive summary of vertebrate taxa that arrived or were present on the island during four major intervals (as in [13]; herein, taxa from the second and third period were merged for analysis). The box for the Jurassic-Cretaceous shows extinct fossil taxa that were present in Madagascar in the Late Cretaceous, plus extant taxa reconstructed to have existed during this time. Subsequent boxes show taxa that are estimated to have arrived on the island during the respective interval, with each image representing one (or rarely two) endemic Malagasy clades. Extinct taxa are marked with † (in parentheses if taxon is extinct on Madagascar but surviving elsewhere). Red font marks taxa that might be of younger origin according to some molecular estimates. Maps show changing landmass configurations and patterns of vertebrate appearance in or colonization of Madagascar by time slice and proportion of dominant colonizer types (unadjusted frequencies in percent, after [13]).