Topic summary
Grande Coupure
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Eocene–Oligocene extinction event.
Grande Coupure
The Grande Coupure, 'great break' in French, with a major European turnover in mammalian fauna around 33.5 million years ago, marks the end of the last phase of Eocene assemblages, the Priabonian, and the arrival in Europe of Asian species. The Grande Coupure is characterized by widespread extinctions and allopatric speciation in small isolated relict populations. It was given its name in 1910 by the Swiss palaeontologist Hans Georg Stehlin, to characterise the dramatic turnover of European mammalian fauna, which he placed at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. A comparable turnover in Asian fauna has since been called the "Mongolian Remodelling".