We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Cambridge Core ecommerce is unavailable Sunday 08/12/2024 from 08:00 – 18:00 (GMT). This is due to site maintenance. We apologise for any inconvenience.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
South America had an endemic mammalian fauna for much of the Cenozoic, largely
evolved during its long isolation. The predator guild was mainly occupied by
metatherians (Sparassodonta), as well as large terrestrial birds
(Phorusrhacidae), agile terrestrial crocodiles (Sebecidae), and giant snakes
(Madtsoiidae). Sparassodonta was a diverse clade, recorded from the Paleocene to
the Middle Pliocene, with its acme in the late Early Miocene (Santacrucian Age).
In this chapter, we review the paleoecology of the sparassodonts known from the
Santa Cruz Formation and include new results obtained by geometric morphometric
analyses. The Santa Cruz Formation contains 11 sparassodont species: six
Hathliacynidae (Acyon tricuspidatus,
Cladosictis patagonica, Sipalocyon gracilis, Sipalocyon obusta, Pseudonotictis
pusillus, Perathereutes
pungens) and five Borhyaenoidea (Prothylacynus patagonicus, Lycopsis
torresi, and three Borhyaenidae, Borhyaena tuberata, Acrocyon
sectorius, and Arctodictis
munizi). These sparassodonts were mainly hypercarnivores
exhibiting different locomotor abilities (from scansorial to terrestrial), and a
wide range of body masses (from 1 kg to more than 50 kg). The reconstruction of
the Santacrucian predator guild suggests that there was good ecological
separation within the sparassodonts, determined by particular combinations of
body size, locomotion, and diet. The diversity of sparassodonts recorded in the
Santa Cruz Formation (11 species) and in the Estancia La Costa Member (seven
species), is similar to that observed in present and past placental
hypercarnivore communities.