You can’t talk about fossils without talking about time, and mammalian paleontologists (also known as paleomammalogists) generally have two different ways to talk about how long ago an animal lived. The first way is to discuss age in terms of absolute time: saying a fossil is 25 million years old, for instance. The only way to […]
Perhaps the most important of our Chilean localities is Tinguiririca, which is located in central Chile near the town of Termas del Flaco. In the transition between the warm, equitable climate of the Eocene Epoch (54.8 to 33.7 million years ago) and the cooler climate of the Oligocene Epoch (33.7 to 23.8 mya), numerous ‘archaic’ […]
Many of the other fossils we have discovered in Chile come from a variety of localities in the central part of the country. All of these sites apparently sample the Abanico Formation, a group of rocks that was deposited mainly between about 40 million and 15 million years ago. This particular formation tends to preserve specimens in great […]
I am interested in the extinct mammals of Peru for many of the same reasons I am interested in the extinct mammals of Bolivia. Therefore, I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with a French and Peruvian research team led by Pierre-Olivier Antoine on a project searching for mammal fossils in the eastern part of […]
The basal notoungulate families Henricosborniidae and Notostylopidae are mainly known from Eocene fossil sites. Henricosborniids have also been identified from at least one Paleocene site (Tiupampa), and notostylopids survived into the early Oligocene based on a recently named species from Chile, Chilestylops davidsoni (Bradham et al. 2015). The cheek teeth of notostylopids are rather distinctive (see Simpson 1948 for […]
Mesotheriids, more commonly known as mesotheres, have been known to science longer than almost any other group of notoungulates. The first mesotheriid, Mesotherium, was named by Serres in 1867. At that time, only the toxodontids Toxodon and Nesodon had been named and described. Mesotherium was named “middle beast” in reference to Serres’ belief that it represented an evolutionary intermediate […]
The Interatheriidae (interatheres) are perhaps the most successful group of notoungulates; they are the longest-ranging of all notoungulate families, and nearly two dozen genera have been described (though it is unclear how many of these are valid). Moreover, interatheriids are often very abundant in the faunas in which they are found, suggesting high population densities; […]
Archaeohyracids (“ancient hyraxes”) are in no way related to true hyraxes (order Hyracoidea), nor do they closely resemble them. They have traditionally been one of the most poorly known groups of notoungulates; they tend to be rare in most faunas, and only a single skull (the holotype of Archaeohyrax patagonicus, at left) had been described until […]
When I tell people I am a paleontologist and that I go out on “digs,” they usually think I spend most of the trip literally digging in one place for fossils. This happens occasionally but is not typical of my fieldwork. Most of my time in the field is spent looking for fossils; relatively little […]
Coming Soon. Classification: Order Notoungulata; Suborder Typotheria Stratigraphic Range: early Oligocene (Tinguirirican) to early Pleistocene (Marplatan) Selected Genera: Hegetotherium, Hemihegetotherium, Paedotherium, Prohegetotherium, Propachyrucos, Pachyrukhos, Tremacyllus Selected References: Cerdeño, E., and M. Bond. 1998. Taxonomic revision and phylogeny of Paedotherium and Tremacyllus (Pachyrukhinae, Hegetotheriidae, Notoungulata) from the late Miocene to Pleistocene of Argentina. Journal of Vertebrate […]
In 2019, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History exhibited a small “pop-up” exhibit highlighting our NSF-sponsored research on Miocene mammals from Quebrada Honda, Bolivia. You can view the video from the exhibit below.
Want to learn more about the fossil history of South American mammals? Check out my blog, The Rafting Monkey. My posts discuss the latest research on South American mammals and fossil mammal sites as well as interesting tidbits from the archives of paleomammalogy. You can visit periodically to see what is new or sign up to get an email alert every […]
NEW BOOK: Horned Armadillos and Rafting Monkeys
Do you know what a notoungulate is? How about an astrapothere, a necrolestid, or a sparassodont? These are just a few of the fascinating mammals that once called South America home. Unfortunately, these and many other ancient South American mammals left no living descendants and have no close living relatives. As a result, they are […]
Notoungulates – literally “southern ungulates.” – may be the most emblematic of all extinct South American mammals. Notoungulates were the most abundant of the native South American ungulates, and probably more species of notoungulates have been named than all other groups of endemic ungulates combined. The group includes more than 150 extinct genera in around a dozen families. Notoungulates lived […]
You can’t talk about fossils without talking about time, and mammalian paleontologists (also known as paleomammalogists) generally have two different ways to talk about how long ago an animal lived. The first way is to discuss age in terms of absolute time: saying a fossil is 25 million years old, for instance. The only way to […]