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Liping Liu

Bio: Liping Liu is an academic researcher from Chinese Academy of Sciences. The author has contributed to research in topics: Late Miocene & Neogene. The author has an hindex of 12, co-authored 19 publications receiving 1092 citations. Previous affiliations of Liping Liu include Academia Sinica & Swedish Museum of Natural History.

Papers
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Journal Article
TL;DR: Fossil teeth of terrestrial plant-eating mammals offer a new, quasi-quantitative proxy for environmental aridity that resolves previously unseen regional features across the Eurasian continent from 24 to 2 million years ago.
Abstract: Fossil teeth of terrestrial plant-eating mammals offer a new, quasi-quantitative proxy for environmental aridity that resolves previously unseen regional features across the Eurasian continent from 24 to 2 million years ago. The pattern seen prior to 11 million years ago are quite different from today’s. Thereafter, a progressively modern rainfall distribution developed at about 7 to 5 million years ago when East Asia remained unexpectedly humid while Europe experienced a transient phase of strong aridity. Mean hypsodonty is a geographically extensive and stratigraphically well-resolved palaeoprecipitation proxy that can be used to constrain the regional details of vegetation and climate models.

324 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use mean plant-eater hypsodonty (molarcrown height) of late NeogenemammallocalitiestomaplateMiocene and Pliocenepalaeoprecipitation on the Eurasian continent and, with higher temporal resolution, in Europe.

229 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The early Miocene retained the overall humid conditions of the late Paleogene, while the late Miocene as a whole was a time of large changes, and there was continent-wide restructuring of the distribution of environments.
Abstract: Background: We developed a method to estimate precipitation using mammalian ecomorphology, specifically the relative height of the molars of herbivores (see companion paper, this issue) Question: If we apply the new method to paleoenvironments, do the results agree with previous results from fossil mammals and paleobotanical proxies? Data: Large herbivorous fossil mammals of Eurasia Data from NOW database covers 23–22 Ma and is Eurasia-wide Method: We apply the new precipitation estimation method (based on present-day mammalian ecomorphology) to fossil assemblages from different localities Conclusions: The early Miocene retained the overall humid conditions of the late Paleogene A shift to more arid conditions began during the middle Miocene The late Miocene as a whole was a time of large changes, and there was continent-wide restructuring of the distribution of environments Our new results agree with previous investigations and the mammal proxy data are in good agreement with palaeovegetation data Mammals and vegetation produce similar precipitation values and large-scale patterns

127 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: The methods unravelled the complex relationships between the environment and the characteristics of mammalian communities and provide a reasonably accurate estimate of precipitation values for today’s world.
Abstract: Question: How can mammalian community characteristics be used to estimate regional precipitation? Data: Global distribution data of large mammals and their ecomorphology; global climate data. Research methods: Non-linear regression-tree analysis and linear regression. Conclusions: The methods unravelled the complex relationships between the environment and the characteristics of mammalian communities. The regression trees described here provide a reasonably accurate estimate of precipitation values for today’s world. The strongest correlations are for annual precipitation versus diet (R 2 = 0.665), precipitation versus tooth crown height (R 2 = 0.658), and precipitation versus diet and tooth crown height combined (R 2 = 0.742)

108 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a paleoprecipitation analysis based on mean molar tooth height (hypsodonty) of large herbivorous mammals to investigate the spatial pattern of climate zonation in East Asia during the middle Miocene.

78 citations


Cited by
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TL;DR: A methodological roadmap for species-level biogeographical regionalizations at the global scale is developed and illustrated and it is proposed that this sort of new, quantitative delineation and relationship assessment across taxonomic and geographical grains is likely to offer opportunities for more rigorous inference in historical and ecological biogeography and conservation.
Abstract: Aim Biogeographical regionalizations, such as zoogeographical regions, floristic kingdoms or ecoregions, represent categorizations central to many basic and applied questions in biogeography, ecology, evolution and conservation. Traditionally established by experts based on qualitative evidence, the lack of transparency and quantitative support has set constraints on their utility. The recent availability of global species range maps, novel multivariate techniques and enhanced computational power now enable a quantitative scrutiny and extension of biogeographical regionalizations that will facilitate new and more rigorous uses. In this paper we develop and illustrate a methodological roadmap for species-level biogeographical regionalizations at the global scale and apply it to mammals. Location Global. Methods We explore the relative usefulness of ordination and clustering methods and validation techniques. The performance of nine different clustering algorithms is tested at different taxonomic levels. The grain of regionalization (i.e. the number of clusters) will usually be driven by the purpose of the study, but we present several approaches that provide guidance. Results Non-metric multidimensional scaling offers a valuable first step in identifying and illustrating biogeographical transition zones. For the clustering of regions, the nine different hierarchical clustering methods varied greatly in utility, with UPGMA (unweighted pair-group method using arithmetic averages) agglomerative hierarchical clustering having consistently the best performance. The UPGMA approach allows a tree-like phenetic representation of the relative distances of regions and can be applied at different levels of taxonomic resolution. We find that the new quantitative biogeographical regions exhibit both striking similarities to and differences from the classic primary geographical divisions of the world’s biota. Specifically, our results provide evidence that the Sahara, northern Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and parts of the Middle East should be regarded as part of the Afrotropics. Further, the position of the New Guinean continental shelf, Lydekker’s Line, is supported as an appropriate border to separate the Oriental and Australian regions. Main conclusions We propose that this sort of new, quantitative delineation and relationship assessment across taxonomic and geographical grains is likely to offer opportunities for more rigorous inference in historical and ecological biogeography and conservation.

559 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The evolution and subsequent ecological expansion of grasses (Poaceae) since the Late Cretaceous have resulted in the establishment of one of Earth's dominant biomes, the temperate and tropical grasslands, at the expense of forests as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The evolution and subsequent ecological expansion of grasses (Poaceae) since the Late Cretaceous have resulted in the establishment of one of Earth’s dominant biomes, the temperate and tropical grasslands, at the expense of forests. In the past decades, several new approaches have been applied to the fossil record of grasses to elucidate the patterns and processes of this ecosystem transformation. The data indicate that the development of grassland ecosystems on most continents was a multistage process involving the Paleogene appearance of (C3 and C4) open-habitat grasses, the mid-late Cenozoic spread of C3 grass-dominated habitats, and, finally, the Late Neogene expansion of C4 grasses at tropical-subtropical latitudes. The evolution of herbivores adapted to grasslands did not necessarily coincide with the spread of open-habitat grasses. In addition, the timing of these evolutionary and ecological events varied between regions. Consequently, region-by-region investigations using both direct (plant fossils) and indirect (e.g., stable carbon isotopes, faunas) evidence are required for a full understanding of the tempo and mode of grass and grassland evolution.

549 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The results indicate that the evolutionary history of cetartiodactyls was punctuated by four main phases of rapid radiation during the Cenozoic era, and shows that the high species diversity now observed in the families Bovidae and Cervidae accumulated mainly during the Late Miocene and Plio-Pleistocene.

472 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined the evolution of Miocene climate (both moisture and temperature) within five separate regions of Eurasia to help understand the large scale controls of long-term moisture in Central Asia.

317 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: P pervasive evidence is found that avian evolution has been influenced by plate tectonics and environmental change, two basic features of Earth’s dynamics.
Abstract: Determining the timing of diversification of modern birds has been difficult. We combined DNA sequences of clock-like genes for most avian families with 130 fossil birds to generate a new time tree for Neornithes and investigated their biogeographic and diversification dynamics. We found that the most recent common ancestor of modern birds inhabited South America around 95 million years ago, but it was not until the Cretaceous-Paleogene transition (66 million years ago) that Neornithes began to diversify rapidly around the world. Birds used two main dispersion routes: reaching the Old World through North America, and reaching Australia and Zealandia through Antarctica. Net diversification rates increased during periods of global cooling, suggesting that fragmentation of tropical biomes stimulated speciation. Thus, we found pervasive evidence that avian evolution has been influenced by plate tectonics and environmental change, two basic features of Earth’s dynamics.

297 citations