Migration and adaptation of late Cenozoic cold-water molluscs in the North Pacific

Abstract

Cold-water molluscan fauna originated in the North Pacific in accordance with the worldwide cooling events around the latest Eocene. The westward trans-Pacific migration of the cold-water molluscs occurred during the early to early middle Miocene, owing to shifting climatic belts and ecological opportunity rather than current direction. In contrast, the eastward migration of the cold-water molluscs occurred in cool climate ages from the early Oligocene to Holocene. As a result of the Plio-Pleistocene cooling, cold-water species spreaded to the Yellow and the East China Sea through the Japan Sea. Shifting climatic belts thus affected the zoogeographic range of cold-water species. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.