Wildlife and Wonders of Southern Africa

The fauna of Africa, in its broader sense, is all the animals living in Africa and its surrounding seas and islands. The more characteristic African fauna is found in the Afrotropical ecoregion. Lying almost entirely within the tropics, and equally to north and south of the equator creates favourable conditions for rich wildlife. Africa is home to many of the world's most famous fauna in human culture such as Lions‚ Rhinos‚ Cheetahs‚ Giraffes‚ Leopards, Zebras‚ Elephants among many others.

Whereas the earliest traces of life in fossil record of Africa date back to the earliest times, the formation of African fauna as we know it today, began with the splitting up of the Gondwana supercontinent in the mid-Mesozoic era. The continents Laurasia-Gondwana 200 million years ago

After that, four to six faunal assemblages, the so-called African Faunal Strata (AFSs) can be distinguished. The isolation of Africa was broken intermittently by discontinuous "filter routes" that linked it to some other Gondwanan continents (Madagascar, South America, and perhaps India), but mainly to Laurasia. Interchanges with Gondwana were rare and mainly "out-of-Africa" dispersals, whereas interchanges with Laurasia were numerous and bidirectional, although mainly from Laurasia to Africa. Despite these connections, isolation resulted in remarkable absences, poor diversity, and emergence of endemic taxa in Africa. Madagascar separated from continental Africa during the break-up of Gondwanaland early in the Cretaceous, but was probably connected to the mainland again in the Eocene.