Species Discrimination of Co-Occurring Small Fossil Mammals: A Case Study of the Cretaceous-Paleogene Multituberculate Genus Mesodma

Smith, Stephanie M.; Wilson, Gregory P.

doi:10.1007/s10914-016-9332-2

Cited by 10 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…For each metric, we calculated taxonomic richness at the genus level as well as the species level. The genus-level calculation was used to account for the difficulties in assigning isolated teeth of Mesodma and Mimatuta to species (Novacek and Clemens, 1977;Van Valen, 1978;Lofgren, 1995;Smith and Wilson, 2017); see the Data Repository for further information concerning those genera.…”

Section: Relative Abundances and Taxonomic Richnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early mammalian recovery after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: A high-resolution view from McGuire Creek area, Montana, USA

et al. 2018

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Changes in mammalian faunal composition and structure following the Cretaceous-Paleo gene mass extinction are central to understanding not only how terrestrial communities recovered from this ecological perturbation but also the evolution of archaic groups leading to extant mammalian clades. Here, we analyzed changes in mammalian local faunas during the earliest Paleogene biotic recovery on a small spatiotemporal scale. We compiled samples of mammals from four localities in the Hell Creek Formation and Tullock Member of the Fort Union Formation, in the McGuire Creek area, McCone County, Montana, USA, and placed these localities into a high-precision chronostratigraphic framework using 40 Ar/ 39 Ar tephra ages and magnetostratigraphy. Within this framework, we quantitatively compared faunal composition, heterogeneity, and richness among McGuire Creek local faunas and made broader comparisons to other earliest Paleogene faunas from throughout the Western Interior of North America. In the first ~320 k.y. of the recovery, mammalian local faunas at McGuire Creek, all of which can be placed in the Puercan 1 North American Land Mammal Age (NALMA) interval zone, underwent modest increases in taxonomic richness and heterogeneity, indicating the beginning of biotic recovery; however, no Mc-Guire Creek fauna reached fully recovered levels of taxonomic richness. Further, appearance of immigrant taxa such as Purgato-rius in younger McGuire Creek faunas demonstrates important compositional changes within the Pu1 of McGuire Creek. These results highlight the difficulties with describing the nuanced mammalian recovery process using the NALMA system and emphasize the increasing importance of high-precision dating, especially when comparing faunas across large geographic distances.

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Section: Relative Abundances and Taxonomic Richnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early mammalian recovery after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: A high-resolution view from McGuire Creek area, Montana, USA

et al. 2018

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“…; McGuire ; Calede & Hopkins ; Davis & Calede ; Davis & McHorse ). This work has often focused on teeth because of their utility in mammalian taxonomy and abundance in the fossil record (see Smith & Wilson ) but it can be complicated by the change in apparent tooth shape with wear in hypsodont taxa (e.g. Roth ; MacFadden, ; Orlando et al .…”

Section: Previous Taxonomic Diagnoses Of Gopher Speciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geometric morphometric analyses of worn cheek teeth help identify extant and extinct gophers (Rodentia, Geomyidae)

Calede

Glusman

2017

Palaeontology

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Studies of the biostratigraphy and palaeoecology of fossil vertebrate assemblages require large samples of accurately identified specimens. Such analyses can be hampered by the inability to assign isolated and worn remains to specific taxa. Entoptychine gophers are a diverse group of burrowing rodents found in Oligo‐Miocene deposits of the western United States. In both entoptychines and their extant relatives the geomyines, diagnostic characters of the occlusal surface of the teeth are modified with wear, making difficult the identification of many isolated fossil teeth. We use geometric morphometrics to test the hypothesis that tooth shape informs taxonomic affinities and expected levels of morphological variation across gopher taxa. We also incorporate data from microcomputer tomography to investigate changes in occlusal surface shape through wear within individuals. Our analyses demonstrate the usefulness of our approach in identifying extant geomyines to the genus, subgenus and species levels, and fossil entoptychines to the genus and, in some cases, the species level. Our results cast doubt on the validity of some species within Entoptychus and suggest future revisions to entoptychine taxonomy. The amounts of morphological divergence observed among fossil and extant genera are similar. Fossil species do not differ greatly from extant ones in that regard either. Further work evaluating the morphological variation within and across entoptychine species, including unworn teeth and osteological material, will allow revised analyses of the biostratigraphy and palaeoecology of important Oligo‐Miocene mammalian assemblages of the western United States and help to infer the phylogenetic relationships and evolution of gophers.

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“…We decided to completely outline the exterior contour of the chewing surface of the first upper molars by the curve. Similar approaches have already been applied to other rodent groups where such curves as a whole are considered homologous (Calede and Glusman, 2017; Smith and Wilson, 2017). From the first semi-landmark, the curve was drawn first along the lingual side, then along the buccal side, and closed at the first semi-landmark.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previously, these methods have been used to study only the skulls of modern zokor species, not individual molars and fragmented fossil specimens (Puzachenko et al, 2009(Puzachenko et al, , 2013Butkauskas et al, 2020;Kang et al, 2021Kang et al, , 2023. Geometric morphometric analyses of isolated teeth have been widely used for species identification in other groups of rodents (McGuire, 2011;Calede and Glusman, 2017;Smith and Wilson, 2017;Wyatt et al, 2021;Vitek and Chen, 2022). Because this technique has not been previously used in zokors, one goal of our study is to evaluate the potential of geometric morphometrics to enable the taxonomic identification of zokor molars.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of the West Siberian lineage of zokors (Mammalia, Rodentia, Spalacidae, Myospalacinae) and divergence in molar development

Golovanov,

Zazhigin

2023

J. Paleontol.

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Zokors (Myospalacinae) continue to be the center of systematics discussions. Phylogenetic schemes based on molecular data do not always agree with each other, nor can phylogenetic schemes based on paleontological material be complete due to the only-partial description of West Siberian zokors. This paper tries to fill this gap and presents a description of the West Siberian lineage from the late early Pleistocene to the present, together with an analysis of molar development in other zokor lineages. We describe two new species and one subspecies (Myospalax myospalax krukoveri n. ssp., Myospalax convexus n. sp., Prosiphneus razdoleanensis n. sp.) ancestral to the extant Myospalax myospalax Laxmann, 1769. We also reveal differences in the ontogeny of molars of modern species that were not previously detailed. These differences, together with paleontological data, indicate that in the West Siberian lineage, peramorphosis occurred in the structure of the chewing surface (with the exception of the lower m1), whereas in all other zokor lineages, there was pedomorphosis. On the basis of these results, we suggest a new view on the systematics of Myospalacinae. UUID: http://zoobank.org/b06d6c99-1648-454b-9b95-4d869bfe8bdc

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Species Discrimination of Co-Occurring Small Fossil Mammals: A Case Study of the Cretaceous-Paleogene Multituberculate Genus Mesodma

Cited by 10 publications

References 21 publications

Early mammalian recovery after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: A high-resolution view from McGuire Creek area, Montana, USA

Early mammalian recovery after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: A high-resolution view from McGuire Creek area, Montana, USA

Geometric morphometric analyses of worn cheek teeth help identify extant and extinct gophers (Rodentia, Geomyidae)

Characterization of the West Siberian lineage of zokors (Mammalia, Rodentia, Spalacidae, Myospalacinae) and divergence in molar development

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