Alfred Russell Wallace Contributions to the theory of Natural Selection, 1870, and Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace , 'On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties' (Papers presented to the Linnean Society 30th June 1858)

Wallace noticed on expeditions to the Amazon and the Malay archipelego that mammals in Southeast Asia are more advanced than their Australian cousins. His suggestion was that the two continents had split before the better adapted mammals had evolved in Asia. The isolated Australian marsupials were able to thrive, whilst those in Asia were driven to extinction by competition from more advanced mamm...