The postulation of intermittent land bridges as an explanation for reiterated colonization events of Madagascar by African vertebrates: an in-depth review and novel insights in honour of the late Judith Masters and Fabien Génin.

Madagascar’s vertebrate fauna is the result of an intricate biogeographic history not considered in the models developed to explain colonisation on other islands. For 80 years popular opinion has held that most of Madagascar’s terrestrial vertebrate fauna arrived via transoceanic dispersal (i.e., by rafting or swimming), chiefly from Africa. The alternative solution of recurrent uplifts of a land bridge connected with cyclic global kinematic revolutions, proposed in 2021, was recently challenged. The 2021 paper demonstrates the strength of a comprehensive holistic approach (sedimentary, tectonic, kinematic, and palaeo-environmental studies) based on the new, large-scale dataset provided by the PAMELA (Passive Margins Exploration Laboratories) research project. This episodic land bridges hypothesis was tested with divergence estimates of dispersal mechanisms of Madagascar’s Angiosperm taxa. The present study includes preliminary palynological results obtained on the latest Miocene to earliest Pliocene material from DSDP Site 242. These pollen assemblages are illustrative of vegetation belts from the coastline to high relief, i.e., from mangrove up to montane forests including intermediate low altitude vegetation.