Aoteaora New Zealand has experienced a dynamic geological and climatic history. There was the separation from the southern super-continent Gondwana, the near drowning during the Oligocene some 27-22 million years ago, and the dramatic changes wrought by ice ages during the Pleistocene which started 2.6 million years ago.
In concert with these landscape-scale changes, the biodiversity of Aotearoa has undergone an equally dramatic journey, evolving into something uniquely New Zealand. Jared Diamond famously described our wildlife as “the nearest thing to studying life on another planet”.
