Crocodylian diversity peak and extinction in the late Cenozoic of the northern Neotropics

A Late Miocene Pipine Frog from the Urumaco Formation, Venezuela

“…The Neogene localities in the Urumaco Basin have so far yielded a large number of marine and continental vertebrates belonging to several major clades (Sánchez-Villagra et al, 2010;Carrillo-Briceño et al, 2015) but amphibians had not been reported to date. Most of the continental taxa retrieved are large sized, some being 'gigantic', such as the crocodilians Gryposuchus and Purussaurus, the turtle Stupendemys and the rodent Phoberomys (among others, Sánchez-Villagra et al, 2010;Scheyer et al, 2013). Prospection in the Urumaco Basin carried out in November 2013 yielded few continental vertebrates of small size, including the single amphibian remain that is here described and discussed.…”

Carnivorans at the Great American Biotic Interchange: new discoveries from the northern neotropics

“…: Neoepiblemidae, and Marisela gregoriana: Octodontoidea? ), and the procyonid studied here (Carlini and Zurita 2010;Vucetich et al 2010;Zurita et al 2011;Scheyer et al 2013;Castro et al 2014). A late Pliocene age was estimated for the Vergel Member of the San Gregorio Formation based on the stratigraphic position and the mammalian association (Carlini and Zurita 2010;Zurita et al 2011;Castro et al 2014, who tentatively suggested an approximate age of 3.5 Ma).…”

Reptiles Extintos - Volumen en Homenaje a Zulma Gasparini

“…Miocene record of crocodylians in the Pan-Amazonian region (sensu Hoorn et al, 2010) is characterized by the great taxonomic diversification of the caimanines clade (Langston, 1965;Riff et al, 2010;Bona et al, 2013a,b) with a wide geographic distribution of several genera (e.g., Mourasuchus, Purussaurus, Caiman) and local endemism at the species level (Bona et al, 2013a,b;Scheyer et al, 2013;Salas-Gismondi et al, 2015). It is known that during the Miocene continental vertebrates in South America reached huge body sizes (e.g., Cione et al, 2005;Vizcaíno et al, 2012;Vucetich et al, 2015).…”

“…During the Neogene, the exceptional crocodilian fossil blunt-snouted taxa with crushing dentitions (Langston, 1965;Aguilera et al, 2006;Scheyer et al, 2013;SalasGismondi et al, 2015). Although this Amazonian diversity is remarkable, an overview on the high-latitude record of South American caimanines is essential for a comprehensive view of the history of the group (Bona et al, 2013a), especially considering that the richest record of Alligatoridae in Argentina belongs to the Late Miocene.…”

“…This record corresponds mainly to cranial and postcranial fragmentary elements of different taxa, which have been studied by numerous authors since the mid-nineteenth century (Bravard, 1858;Burmeister, 1883;Ambrosetti, 1887;Scalabrini, 1887;Rovereto, 1912;Rusconi, , 1935Patterson, 1936;Langston, 1965;Gasparini, 1968Gasparini, , 1973Langston and Gasparini, 1997). Contrary to modern day ecosystems, in which overall alligatorid diversity is declining and no more than two species occur sympatrically (Scheyer et al, 2013), the "Conglomerado Osífero" could have housed at least six species of caimanines Bona et al, 2012Bona et al, , 2013a. Finally, during the Pliocene-Pleistocene, Argentinean alligatorids were represented by a well-preserved specimen from Salta Province (Barrios, 2013) and some fragmentary materials from the Pleistocene of Salta and Entre Ríos (Patterson, 1936;Noriega et al, 2004).…”