Small mammal species diversity and distribution in the Selous ecosystem, Tanzania

Saanya, Aenea; Massawe, Apia W.; Makundi, Rhodes H.

doi:10.1080/15627020.2022.2034040

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 29 publications

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“…Smaller reptiles and mammals, such as lizards and rodents, have a very limited home range (Perry & Garland, 2002;Ariano-Sánchez et al, 2020;Saanya et al, 2022). When faced with changes in their environment, these small vertebrates have no other option but evolutionary change.…”

Section: Size and Home-rangementioning

confidence: 99%

Did large foraging migrations favor the enormous body size of giant sauropods? The case of Turiasaurus

Agusti,

Alcalá,

Santos-Cubedo

2024

Spanish J. Palaeontol.

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Deciphering the huge dimensions of sauropod dinosaurs have long constituted a complex problem, especially since the largest land mammal, the giant rhinoceros Paraceratherium, which reached more than 6 m in height, would have been a mid-sized dinosaur in the Mesozoic (Hutchinson, 2021). Evolution towards gigantism in sauropodomorphs started after the end-Triassic mass extinction, in the Early Jurassic, when this group significantly expanded its geographic range to lower latitudes (Dunne et al., 2023). Previously, sauropodomorphs were mostly restricted to higher latitudes, favoring cooler conditions with higher seasonality in surface temperatures. We can find in this early expansion of the sauropodomorph geographic and biotic range a first argument for initial enlargement of body size. Later in the Jurassic, this spatial pattern seems to have been reversed, sauropods being largely restricted to lower latitudes, their presence at higher latitudes being very rare, in contrast with ornithischians and theropods (Mannion et al., 2012;Dunne, 2022). It seems, therefore, that sauropods were unable to extend to extreme palaeolatitudes because cold temperatures were a constraint (Chiarenza et al., 2022;Dunne et al., 2023). In contrast, the Gondwanan land masses, particularly Africa and South America, probably provided the best conditions for sauropods during the Cretaceous, where we find the largest known titanosaur sauropods (e.g., Patagotitan and Argentinosaurus; Carballido et al., 2017).

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Section: Size and Home-rangementioning

confidence: 99%