Gondwanan distribution

Gondwanan distribution is a term used to describe how certain plants and animals are found in different parts of the world that were once connected as the supercontinent of Gondwana.

Imagine a big jigsaw puzzle with many pieces. Gondwana was a huge piece of land that was made up of what we now know as Africa, South America, Antarctica, Australia, and other smaller land masses. A long, long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, Gondwana started to break apart and slowly drifted away from each other, eventually forming the continents we know today.

Now, because these continents used to be one big piece, certain plants and animals were able to travel and spread throughout all of Gondwana. Over millions of years, they evolved and adapted to their new environments as Gondwana slowly separated. Some of them, however, remained very similar because they were not separated long enough to evolve into very different species.

This is how we get gondwanan distribution. Certain animals and plants that were once found in Gondwana now have similar species on different continents. For example, lemurs are found only on the island of Madagascar, but they have similar relatives in South America, Africa, and India. This shows that they all share a common ancestor that lived in Gondwana before it separated. Similarly, the Eucalyptus tree is native to Australia, but there are similar trees in South America and Africa because they all evolved from a common ancestor in Gondwana.

In summary, gondwanan distribution is the way that some plants and animals are found in different parts of the world because they share a common ancestor from when their continents used to be one big supercontinent called Gondwana.