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Old February 14th, 2014 #16
Alex Linder
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[from Wyoming Wildlife, November 1998, p. 10]

Quote:
Farther south where the continents are separated by thousands of miles of ocean, the fauna of the New World and the Old are quite different, but in the north, land bridges have opened regularly over several hundred thousand years, allowing the residents of the boreal forest and the taiga to move back and forth. As a result, many of the animals we associate with our American coniferous timber also live in the forests of Siberia, Russia, and Scandinavia. The moose, wolf, caribou, brown bear, wolverine, ermine, raven, and great gray owl of Asia and America are the same species, and the lynx, snowshoe hare, pine squirrel, and gray jay on the two continents are closely related and practically indistinguishable from one another.
Interesting idea...think of the world from a different perspective, looking down on it from straight over the north pole. Then it's like a removed, whole orange peel. the stuff at the top is a common area, so the species on it are the same. But the farther south, it splits four or five ways, and the animals down there grow apart. Just sort of a new conception, you can see what the guy means.