Current Status and Distribution
Many members of Afrotheria appear to be at high risk of extinction. Species loss within this group would therefore comprise a particularly devastating loss of genetic and evolutionary diversity. The Afrotheria Specialist Group notes that Afrotheria as currently reconstructed include nearly a third of all mammalian orders currently found in Africa and Madagascar, but only 75 of more than 1,200 mammalian species in those areas.
While most extant species assigned to the cohort Afrotheria live in Africa, some (such as the Indian elephant and three of four species of sirenian) occur elsewhere; many of these are endangered, as well. Prior to the Quaternary extinction event, proboscideans were present on every continent of the world except Australia and Antarctica. Hyraxes lived in much of Eurasia as recently as the end of the Pliocene; the extinct afrotherian orders of embrithopods and desmostylians were also once widely distributed.
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