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Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region
Pleistocene South American megafauna has traditionally attracted the interest of scientists and the popular media alike. However, ecological interactions between the species that inhabited these ecosystems, such as predator-prey relationships or interspecific competition, are poorly known. To this r...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
PeerJ Inc.
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5426367/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28503369 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3117 |
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author | Chichkoyan, Karina Vanesa Figueirido, Borja Belinchón, Margarita Lanata, José Luis Moigne, Anne-Marie Martínez-Navarro, Bienvenido |
author_facet | Chichkoyan, Karina Vanesa Figueirido, Borja Belinchón, Margarita Lanata, José Luis Moigne, Anne-Marie Martínez-Navarro, Bienvenido |
author_sort | Chichkoyan, Karina Vanesa |
collection | PubMed |
description | Pleistocene South American megafauna has traditionally attracted the interest of scientists and the popular media alike. However, ecological interactions between the species that inhabited these ecosystems, such as predator-prey relationships or interspecific competition, are poorly known. To this regard, carnivore marks imprinted on the fossil bones of megamammal remains are very useful for deciphering biological activity and, hence, potential interspecific relationships among taxa. In this article, we study historical fossil collections housed in different European and Argentinean museums that were excavated during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Pampean region, Argentina, in order to detect carnivore marks on bones of megamammals and provide crucial information on the ecological relationships between South American taxa during the Pleistocene. Our results indicate that the long bones of megafauna from the Pampean region (e.g., the Mylodontidae and Toxodontidae families) exhibit carnivore marks. Furthermore, long bones of medium-sized species and indeterminate bones also present punctures, pits, scores and fractures. Members of the large-carnivore guild, such as ursids, canids and even felids, are recognised as the main agents that inflicted the marks. We hypothesize that the analysed carnivore marks represent the last stages of megaherbivore carcass exploitation, suggesting full consumption of these animals by the same or multiple taxa in a hunting and/or scavenging scenario. Moreover, our observations provide novel insights that help further our understanding of the palaeoecological relationships of these unique communities of megamammals. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5426367 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | PeerJ Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54263672017-05-12 Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region Chichkoyan, Karina Vanesa Figueirido, Borja Belinchón, Margarita Lanata, José Luis Moigne, Anne-Marie Martínez-Navarro, Bienvenido PeerJ Paleontology Pleistocene South American megafauna has traditionally attracted the interest of scientists and the popular media alike. However, ecological interactions between the species that inhabited these ecosystems, such as predator-prey relationships or interspecific competition, are poorly known. To this regard, carnivore marks imprinted on the fossil bones of megamammal remains are very useful for deciphering biological activity and, hence, potential interspecific relationships among taxa. In this article, we study historical fossil collections housed in different European and Argentinean museums that were excavated during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Pampean region, Argentina, in order to detect carnivore marks on bones of megamammals and provide crucial information on the ecological relationships between South American taxa during the Pleistocene. Our results indicate that the long bones of megafauna from the Pampean region (e.g., the Mylodontidae and Toxodontidae families) exhibit carnivore marks. Furthermore, long bones of medium-sized species and indeterminate bones also present punctures, pits, scores and fractures. Members of the large-carnivore guild, such as ursids, canids and even felids, are recognised as the main agents that inflicted the marks. We hypothesize that the analysed carnivore marks represent the last stages of megaherbivore carcass exploitation, suggesting full consumption of these animals by the same or multiple taxa in a hunting and/or scavenging scenario. Moreover, our observations provide novel insights that help further our understanding of the palaeoecological relationships of these unique communities of megamammals. PeerJ Inc. 2017-05-09 /pmc/articles/PMC5426367/ /pubmed/28503369 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3117 Text en ©2017 Chichkoyan et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
spellingShingle | Paleontology Chichkoyan, Karina Vanesa Figueirido, Borja Belinchón, Margarita Lanata, José Luis Moigne, Anne-Marie Martínez-Navarro, Bienvenido Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region |
title | Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region |
title_full | Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region |
title_fullStr | Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region |
title_full_unstemmed | Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region |
title_short | Direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the Pampean region |
title_sort | direct evidence of megamammal-carnivore interaction decoded from bone marks in historical fossil collections from the pampean region |
topic | Paleontology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5426367/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28503369 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.3117 |
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