Paleotropical Kingdom

Origin

A distinct community of vascular plants evolved millions of years ago, and are now found on several separate areas. Millions of years ago, the warmer and wetter areas supported a tropical adapted flora, including forests of

Over millions of years, these type of vegetation present, covered much of the tropics of Earth. Many species are today relicts of a type of vegetation disappeared, which originally covered much of the mainland of Africa, Madagascar, India, South America, Antarctica, Australia, North America, Europe, and other lands when their climate were more humid and warm. Although warm cloud forests disappeared during the glaciations, they re-colonized large areas every time the weather was favorable again. Most of the cloud forests are believed to have retreated and advanced during successive geological eras, and their species adapted to warm and wet gradually retreated and advanced, replaced by more cold-tolerant or drought-tolerant sclerophyll plant communities. Many of the existing species became extinct because they could not cross the barriers posed by new oceans, mountains and deserts, but others found refuge as species relict in coastal areas and Islands.

In the Carboniferous and Permian, New Zealand and New Caledonia were on the periphery of Gondwana, which included Africa, South America, Antarctica, India, New Zealand and Australia. Paleomagnetic data locate New Caledonia originally near the South Pole. In the Triassic and early Jurassic, Gondwana moved northward, warming the eastern margin. New Caledonia separated from

Many members of the late Cretaceous – early Tertiary Gondwanan flora survived in islands and Coastal area's equable climate but were eliminated in mainland due to increasingly dry conditions.[1] When the large landmasses became drier and with a harsher climate, this type of forest was reduced to those boundaries areas.

Plants have limited