MORFOLOGÍA CRANEANA EN TIGRES DIENTES DE SABLE: ALOMETRÍA, FUNCIÓN Y FILOGENIA

FRANCISCO J. PREVOSTI; GUILLERMO F. TURAZZINI ; M. AMELIA CHEMISQUY

AMEGHINIANA

ASOCIACION PALEONTOLOGICA ARGENTINA

Año: 2010 p. 1 - 36

0002-7014

Cranial morphology of felids and sabre-toothed mammals has been72 studied using different approaches and methodologies. Recent studies used geometric73 morphometry analyses of the lateral view of the mandible and skull, and showed that74 “derived” sabretooth cats are separated from recent felids by having a set of characters75 (e.g. small coronoid process, large mental and mastoid processes) associated with the76 presence of hypertrophied upper canines. In this work, we used geometric77 morphometric to analyse the shape of the skull (dorsal and ventral views) and mandible78 (lateral view) in a large sample of recent felids (Felinae), extinct sabretooth felids79 (Machairodontinae), Nimravidae, Creodonta and the marsupial sabretooth80 Thylacosmilus Riggs, 1934. The results were similar to the obtained with the lateral81 view of the skull: “primitive” sabretooth were placed with recent felids, but “derived”82 ones fell outside the range of the Felinae, because they possessed larger mastoid83 process, larger and more procumbent upper incisors and smaller temporal fossa, among84 other characters. Besides that, sabretooth shared some features (e.g. large palate and85 canines) with larger Felinae (e.g. Panthera spp.), suggesting that they were able to hunt86 large mammals. The pattern of cranial variability of these groups is explained by87 ecological factors but also by phylogenetic constraints. The shape of the skull was88 correlated with the size and the length of the upper canines, two features that presented89 a clear correlation along the phylogeny of the group.