CICYTTP   12500
CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION CIENTIFICA Y DE TRANSFERENCIA TECNOLOGICA A LA PRODUCCION
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
artículos
Título:
A Pleistocene Giant River Otter from Argentina: Remarks on the Fossil Record and Phylogenetic Analysis
Autor/es:
PREVOSTI FRANCISCO JUAN; FERRERO BRENDA SOLEDAD
Revista:
JOURNAL OF VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY
Referencias:
Año: 2008 vol. 28 p. 1171 - 1181
ISSN:
0272-4634
Resumen:
The fossil record of Neotropical Lutrinae is very incomplete, with a few specimens of
Lontra and three records of Pteronura. The published records of Pteronura correspond
to remains of Pteronura sp. from Lujanian beds in Entre Ríos province (Argentina) and
P. brasiliensis found in the Late Pleistocene of Brazil, but they lack stratigraphic
context and their age could range from at least 3800.9 Ka. P. brasiliensis, the giant
river otter, inhabits rivers and lakes of northern central South America, and has been
related to the North American fossil otter Satherium. In this work we describe and
compare a very complete specimen of Pteronura found in Entre Ríos province using
classical morphological descriptive and multivariate analyses, discuss the importance of
this specimen for the fossil record of the taxon, and perform a preliminary phylogenetic
analysis. The specimen agrees in morphometric and qualitative characters with the
recent species P. brasiliensis, but is slightly larger and presents some minor differences
in skull and dental morphology. These differences are interpreted as intraspecific
variation, thus the fossil is interpreted as P. brasiliensis. In the phylogenetic analysis,
the studied specimen clusters with P. brasiliensis, corroborating the taxonomic
determination and supporting a relationship between Satherium and Pteronura. The
specimen is the first fossil record of the genus for Argentina, and the oldest
corroborated record, with a 130125 Ka tentative age.