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The "monkey sailor" idea, while bizarre, is no longer as nonsensical as it first appears.

oceanic dispersal via rafting, a concept with a surprising amount of biological precedent. First suggested by one of the forefathers of evolutionary biology, Alfred Russell Wallace, rafting has been used to explain everything from garter snakes in Baja California to the mammalian fauna of Madagascar.

Before the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift came along, rafting was the go-to explanation for any unusual geographical species distributions.

40 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean could have been crossed on a raft in 14.7 days.

Research into the ancient flow of currents (examining geological features such as sedimentary structures) indicates that strong currents in a westerly direction from West Africa did indeed exist in the late Eocene, as they do today.