Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T03:50:45.357Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Three-toed browsing horse Anchitherium (Equidae) from the Miocene of Panama

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Bruce J. MacFadden
Bruce J. MacFadden*
Affiliation:
Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, Gainesville FL 32611,
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the Cenozoic, the New World tropics supported a rich biodiversity of mammals. However, because of the dense vegetative ground cover, today relatively little is known about extinct mammals from this region (MacFadden, 2006a). in an exception to this generalization, fossil vertebrates have been collected since the second half of the twentieth century from Neogene exposures along the Panama Canal. Whitmore and Stewart (1965) briefly reported on the extinct land mammals collected from the Miocene Cucaracha Formation that crops out in the Gaillard Cut along the southern reaches of the Canal. MacFadden (2006b) formally described this assemblage, referred to as the Gaillard Cut Local Fauna (L.F., e.g., Tedford et al., 2004), which consists of at least 10 species of carnivores, artiodactyls (also see recent addition of peccary in Kirby et al., 2008), perissodactyls, and as described by Slaughter (1981), rodents. Prior to the current report, the horses (Family Equidae) from the Gaillard Cut L.F. consisted of only four fragmentary specimens including: two isolated teeth, i.e., one each of Archaeohippus sp. Gidley, 1906 and Anchitherium clarencei Simpson, 1932; a heavily worn partial dentition with p2-p4 of A. clarenci; and a partial calcaneum of Archaeohippus. Although meager, these fossils appear to represent two distinct taxa of three-toed horses otherwise know from the middle Miocene of North America, i.e., the dwarf-horse Archaeohippus sp. and the larger Anchitherium clarencei.

Type
Paleontological Notes
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 83 , Issue 3 , May 2009 , pp. 489 - 492
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Fortelius, M. and Solounias, N. 2000. Functional characterization of ungulate molars using the abrasion-attrition wear gradient: A new method for reconstructing paleodiets. American Museum Novitates, 3301:1–26.2.0.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeSantis, L. R. G. and MacFadden, B. J. 2007. Identifying forested environments in Deep Time using fossil tapirs: Evidence from evolutionary morphology and stable isotopes. Courier Forschung-Institut Senkenberg, 258:147–157.Google Scholar
Gidley, J. W. 1906. A new genus of horse from the Mascall beds, with notes on a small collection of equine teeth in the University of California. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 22:385–388.Google Scholar
Gray, J. E. 1821. On the natural arrangement of vertebrose animals. London Medical Repository Review, 15:296–310.Google Scholar
Hay, O. P. 1924. Fossil vertebrates from the Upper Miocene of Texas. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 37:1–20.Google Scholar
Janis, C. M. 1988. An estimation of tooth volume and hypsodonty indices in ungulate mammals, and the correlation of these factors with dietary preference. p. 367–387. In Russell, D. E., Santoro, J.-P., and Sigogneau-Russell, D. (eds.), Mémoires du Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Série C., 53.Google Scholar
Kirby, M. X., Jones, D. S., and MacFadden, B. J. 2008. Lower Miocene stratigraphy along the Panama Canal and its bearing on the Central American peninsula. PLoS One, 3:e2791, 14 p.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Linnaeus, C. 1758. Systema Naturae per Regna tria Naturae, secundum Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, cum Characteribus, Differentiis, Synonymis, Locis, Tenth edition. Laurentii, Salvi, Stockholm, 824 pp.Google Scholar
MacFadden, B. J. 1992. Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
MacFadden, B. J. 2001. Three-toed browsing horse Anchitherium clarencei from the early Miocene (Hemingfordian) Thomas Farm, Florida. Florida Museum of Natural History Bulletin, 43:79–109.Google Scholar
MacFadden, B. J. 2006a. Extinct mammalian biodiversity of the ancient New World tropics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 21:157–165.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacFadden, B. J. 2006b. North American Miocene land mammals from Panama. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 26:720–734.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacFadden, B. J. and Higgins, P. 2004. Ancient ecology of 15-million-year-old browsing mammals within C3 plant communities from Panama. Oecologia, 140:169–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McKenna, M. C. and Bell, S. K. 1997. Classification of Mammals above the Species Level. Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Meyer, H. von. 1844. Über die fossilen Knochen aus dem Tertiär-Gebilde des Cerro de San Isidro bei Madrid. Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie, und Palaeontologie, 1844:289–310.Google Scholar
Osborn, H. F. 1915. [No title: Description of Kalobatippus]. In Cope, E. D. and Matthew, W. D. (eds.), Hitherto unpublished plates of Tertiary Mammalia and Permian Vertebrata. U.S. Geological Survey and American Museum of Natural History, Monograph Series 2, Plate CVIII.Google Scholar
Owen, R. 1848. Description of teeth and portions of jaws of two extinct anthracotheroid quadrapeds (Hyopotamus vectianus and H. bovinus) discovered by the Marchioness of Hastings in the Eocene deposits on the N.W. coast of the Isle of Wight, with an attempt to develop Cuvier's idea of the classification of pachyderms by the number of their toes. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 4:104–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Paleobiology Database. 2008. (30 January). www.paleodb.org.Google Scholar
Retallack, G. J. and Kirby, M. X. 2007. Middle Miocene global change and paleogeography of Panama. Palaios, 22:667–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1932. Miocene land mammals from Florida. Florida Geological Survey Bulletin, 10:7–41.Google Scholar
Simpson, G. G. 1951. Horses. The Story of the Horse Family in the Modern World and Through Sixty Million Years of History. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Slaughter, B. H. 1981. A new genus of geomyoid rodent from the Miocene of Texas and Panama. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 1:111–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stirton, R. A. 1940. Phylogeny of North American Equidae. University of California Publications, Bulletin of the Department of Geological Sciences, 25:165–198.Google Scholar
Tedford, R. H., Albright, L. B. III, Barnosky, A., Ferrusquia-Villafranca, I., Hunt, R. M. Jr., Storer, J. E., Swisher, C. C. III, Voorhies, M. R., Webb, S. D., and Whistler, D. P. 2004. Mammalian biochronology of the Arikareean through Hemphillian interval (late Oligocene through early Pliocene epochs). p. 169–231. In Woodburne, M. O. (ed.), Late Cretaceous and Cenozoic Mammals of North America. Columbia University Press, New York, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitmore, F. C. Jr. and Stewart, R. H. 1965. Miocene mammals and Central American seaways. Science, 148:180–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed