| miocene mammal reveals a mesozoic ghost lineage on insular new zealand, southwest pacific. | new zealand (nz) has long been upheld as the archetypical example of a land where the biota evolved without nonvolant terrestrial mammals. their absence before human arrival is mysterious, because nz was still attached to east antarctica in the early cretaceous when a variety of terrestrial mammals occupied the adjacent australian portion of gondwana. here we report discovery of a nonvolant mammal from miocene (19-16 ma) sediments of the manuherikia group near st bathans (sb) in central otago, s ... | 2006 | 17159151 |