A late Miocene Argyrolagidae (Mammalia, Metatheria, Bonapartheriiformes) from northwestern Argentina

GARCÍA LÓPEZ, DANIEL ALFREDO; BABOT, MARÍA JUDITH

AMEGHINIANA

ASOCIACION PALEONTOLOGICA ARGENTINA

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2015 vol. 52 p. 314 - 323

0002-7014

In this contribution we present the first record of a member of the family Argyrolagidae (Metatheria) recovered from the India MuertaFormation (late Miocene) exposed near San Miguel de Tucumán, Tucumán Province, Argentina. The specimen is represented by a fragment ofright maxilla with M1 ?4 and is referred here as Microtragulus Ameghino. It clearly differs from other members of the genus that preserve theupper dentition. Nevertheless, the impossibility of comparing this material with species only known by lower dentition, such as Microtraguluscatamarcensis (Kraglievich) prevent us from establishing whether this is a new species or not. The comparisons performed allow us to identifycharacters from the upper dentition differing between Microtragulus and Argyrolagus Ameghino. These characters, in turn, led to the reassignmentof a species previously assigned to Microtragulus. The new record reported here, the third known of Microtragulus from northwesternArgentina, broadens the geographic range of the genus, known from the Atlantic coast of Argentina and several localities of the Andean highlandsand the foothills of the cordilleran range