Wildlife haven of Sulawesi much younger than first thought

An Oxford University collaboration has shed light on the origins of some of South East Asia's most iconic and unique wildlife; the 'deer-pig' (Sulawesi Babirusa), 'warty pig' and the 'miniature buffalo.' In doing so, the research has revealed that Sulawesi, the island paradise where they were discovered, is younger than previously thought. Sitting in a region called Wallacea (named after Alfred Russel Wallace, who discovered the island), at the interface of Eurasia and Australia - two vastly different eco-zones, the island of Sulawesi is home to hundreds of unique plant and animal species. The origin of these species has fascinated generations of Naturalists since the 1700s. To better understand the ancestry of Sulawesi's extraordinary fauna, a team of researchers from Oxford's Department of Archaeology and Queen Mary University of London, used a combination of morphological and genetic data, alongside geological reconstructions of the island. Their analysis, which makes use of over one thousand samples, many of which were collected during the 19th and 20th century, represent the largest genetic study of these species. The results reveal that though each species most likely arrived on what is now the island of Sulawesi at different times over the past 13 million years, all of them began to spread across the island simultaneously about 1-2 million years ago.