BIRTH CANAL WIDE AND UTERINE CAPACITY INDICATORS RELATED TO OFFSPRING BODY MASS, LITTER WEIGHT AND LITTER SIZE IN EXTANT AND FOSSIL MAMMALS

ELISSAMBURU ANDREA

Mar del Plata

Congreso; Reunión de Comuicaciones de la APA; 2015

Asociación Paleontológica Argentina

Reproductive strategies can be approximated from adult body mass, although offspring body mass and litter size can give more accurate tools to predict life histories. In fossil mammals, adult body mass estimation incorporates error to the possible predictions, and additionally, there are not estimators of offspring characteristics. Thus, some direct measurement which can be related to offspring body mass and litter size is needed for using these variables in fossil life history analysis. The objective of the work was test the significance of two measurements, the inter-acetabulum wide (IAW) and the lumbar length (LL), as predictors of offspring body mass, litter biomass, and litter size. The measurement IAW have higher regression values than LL front to offspring body mass and biomass of litter, whereas litter size is not related to these variables. In fossil mammals, acquiring the value of litter size through to divide litter biomass on offspring body mass, can be the most accurate method for fossil prediction. The possibility to estimate the offspring body mass and the litter size in fossil mammals gives a new approximation to study the history of life, paleoecology, and evolution of fossil species.