Mid-Cenozoic climate change, extinction, and faunal turnover in Madagascar, and their bearing on the evolution of lemurs.

While support for large-scale mid-Cenozoic lemur extinction on Madagascar based on phylogenetic modeling is inconclusive, the African fossil record does provide indirect support. Furthermore, a major extinction and recovery of lemuriforms during the Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT) would coincide with other major vertebrate extinctions in North America, Europe, and Africa. It would suggest that Madagascar's lemurs were impacted by the climate shift from "greenhouse" to "ice-house" conditions that occurred at that time. This could, in turn, help to explain some of the peculiar characteristics of the lemuriform clade.