Decoupling the spread of grasslands from the evolution of grazer-type herbivores in South America

Caroline A.E. Strömberg (), Regan E. Dunn, Richard H. Madden, Matthew J. Kohn and Alfredo A. Carlini
Additional contact information
Caroline A.E. Strömberg: University of Washington
Regan E. Dunn: University of Washington
Richard H. Madden: University of Chicago
Matthew J. Kohn: Boise State University
Alfredo A. Carlini: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata B1900FWA, Argentina (CONICET).

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The evolution of high-crowned cheek teeth (hypsodonty) in herbivorous mammals during the late Cenozoic is classically regarded as an adaptive response to the near-global spread of grass-dominated habitats. Precocious hypsodonty in middle Eocene (∼38 million years (Myr) ago) faunas from Patagonia, South America, is therefore thought to signal Earth’s first grasslands, 20 million years earlier than elsewhere. Here, using a high-resolution, 43–18 million-year record of plant silica (phytoliths) from Patagonia, we show that although open-habitat grasses existed in southern South America since the middle Eocene (∼40 Myr ago), they were minor floral components in overall forested habitats between 40 and 18 Myr ago. Thus, distinctly different, continent-specific environmental conditions (arid grasslands versus ash-laden forests) triggered convergent cheek–tooth evolution in Cenozoic herbivores. Hypsodonty evolution is an important example where the present is an insufficient key to the past, and contextual information from fossils is vital for understanding processes of adaptation.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2508 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms2508

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2508

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().