page_title: Palearctic realm
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Palearctic realm / History
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Weltkarte mit den Zoogeographischen Regionen English: World map showing the zoogeographical regions Español: Mapa del mundo que muestra las regiones zoogeográficas Meaning of numbers: Palæarctic region: Central and Northern Europe Mediterranean sub-region Siberian sub-region (Northern Asia) Japan and North China (Manchurian sub-region) Nearctic region: Californian sub-region Rocky Mountain sub-region Alleghany sub-region Canadian sub-region Ethiopian region East African sub-region (Central and East Africa) West African sub-region South African sub-region Malagasy sub-region (Madagascar and Mascarene Islands) Oriental region Indian sub-region (Hindostan) Sub-region of Ceylon and South India Indo-Chinese sub-region (Himalayan sub-region) Malayan sub-region (Indo-Malaya) Australian region Austro-Malayan sub-region Australian sub-region (Australia and Tasmania) Polynesian sub-region (Pacific Islands) New Zealand sub-region Neotropical region Chilian sub-region Brazilian sub-region Mexican sub-region Antillean sub-region
context_page_description: The Palearctic or Palaearctic is one of the eight biogeographic realms of the Earth. It was first used in the 19th century, and is still in use as the basis for zoogeographic classification. The Palearctic is the largest of the eight realms. It stretches across all of Eurasia north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa.
  The realm consists of several ecoregions: the Euro-Siberian region; the Mediterranean Basin; the Sahara and Arabian Deserts; and Western, Central and East Asia. The Palaearctic realm also has numerous rivers and lakes, forming several freshwater ecoregions.
context_section_description: In an 1858 paper for the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, British zoologist Philip Sclater first identified six terrestrial zoogeographic realms of the world: Palaearctic, Aethiopian/Afrotropic, Indian/Indomalayan, Australasian, Nearctic, and Neotropical. The six indicated general groupings of fauna, based on shared biogeography and large-scale geographic barriers to migration.
  Alfred Wallace adopted Sclater's scheme for his book The Geographical Distribution of Animals, published in 1876. This is the same scheme that persists today, with relatively minor revisions, and the addition of two more realms: Oceania and the Antarctic realm.
caption: Frontispiece to Alfred Russel Wallace's book The Geographical Distribution of Animals
exif: {}