INVESTIGADORES
PREVOSTI Francisco Juan
artículos
Título:
DIFFERENCES IN MANDIBULAR DISPARITY BETWEEN EXTANT AND EXTINCT SPECIES OF METATHERIAN AND PLACENTAL CARNIVORES CLADES
Autor/es:
SEBASTIÁN ECHARRI; FRANCISCO J. PREVOSTI
Revista:
LETHAIA
Editorial:
WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC
Referencias:
Lugar: Londres; Año: 2015 vol. 48 p. 196 - 204
ISSN:
0024-1164
Resumen:
There are a number of studies relating to skull morphology differences within the carnivoranclades of both placentals and metatherians. It is difficult to compare thesestudies because of differences in taxonomic sampling, for example some include fossiltaxa while others include non-carnivoran placentals. As a consequence, we studiedmandible morphology in a broad range of both extant and extinct carnivorous species,including Carnivora, Marsupialia and Sparassodonta to test for differences betweenthese clades. We used geometric morphometrics and two disparity indexes, the varianceand Procrustes distances mean. When including fossil species, we found no significantdifferences for both disparities in some analyses, except after the exclusion ofthe sabretooth morphotype. This can be explained by the extreme morphology of thismorphotype, which increases the variance and reduces the disparity effect of the otherspecies in the analyses. Using Procrustes distances, we found significant differences indisparity distances between Carnivora and Metatheria for most of the analyses. Wealso found significant differences using the variance index in some analyses. The mandibulardisparity in Carnivora is greater than in carnivorous metatherian mammalsfor most of the cases and this can be related with differences in evolutionary historyand constraints of both groups. The pattern found in the mandible is similar to thatfound in the face of the skull but was not observed in the braincase, due to differencesin skull function and mandible function. □ Carnivora, disparity, geometric morphometry,mandible, Metatheria.