Evolution Of The Endemic South American Animals

Thesis: The Chupacabra has been a well talked about mysterious creature for years; some do not believe what our new recent evidence has provided.

One of the earliest horse species is known as Hyracotherium. It is believed that this species did not live on open grasslands like modern horses but instead, lived in thick, closed canopy forests. As we saw in lab, the teeth of Hyracotherium are rather pointed which indicates that the species was a browser of leaves and fruits in forests. Its small skull and rostrum also leads one to believe that it had a diet of these easily chewable foods found in closed canopy forests. In contrast, the modern horse has very flat rigid teeth which indicates the species is a grazer of grass. In class, one of the trends we observed was that phalange number decreased over time (Lab Data). An organism with more phalanges typically exhibits better dexterity, balance,

The Bunostegos have knobbly growths on their skull and are the largest recognizable reptiles ever seen in the Pareiasaur group, which are plant eating creatures. The Bunostegos traveled a remote desert approximately 260 million years ago. The unusual reptile belongs to the Pareiasaur group, they thrived during the Permian period. The cow sized creature has been named Bunostegos, which means “Knobby roof”. Researchers supports the idea that there was a remote desert in the middle of Pangea with unusual animals. It is possible that the bony knobs on the skull of Pareiasaurs did not serve as a protective function, but were purely ornamental. The knobbly growths remarkably vary in size and shape between different species. The long period of isolation

The remains at Sitio Drago were well preserved; we were able to identify a wide array of remains. The total number of identified vertebrae faunal remains documented from unit 41, Sitio Drago, Panama was 1,636. Among the identifiable remains found in Sitio Drago were mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. Remains were assigned to at least 90 categories, 86 of which were the most discrete taxonomic levels: 13 mammals species, 9 reptiles species, 2 amphibians species, 56 bony fish species, and 2 cartilaginous fish species. In the midden there also were copious amount of tiny mollusk shells.

Females for the nourishment of the young could define a mammal as a warm-blooded vertebrate animal of a class that is distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, the secretion of milk. The roots of the mammalian line reach back almost 300 million years. Some of the very early mammal relatives dominated the landscape millions of years before dinosaurs appeared, and most of these species became extinct. During the age of dinosaurs, most mammals were not much bigger than small rodents. It was after the extinction of the large dinosaurs that the great diversity of mammals arose. The timeline in this hall displays the development of such key mammalian physical features as the synapsid opening in the skull, a large hole behind the eye socket

Finding Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba was a remarkable challenge. The present day Middle Awash area where the hominid was found is now covered with lakes, forest areas, volcanic rocks and sediments. Only one percent of the Middle Awash contains exposed ancient-sediments that contain mammal fossils. “The new

Ramdius has a small cranial capacity that is “metrically and morphologically derived in the direction of later hominids” and shows a “reduction” in upper canine size (White et al., 2009, p. 80). According to White et. al. (2009), this signifies that Ar. Ramidus was an omnivore, and while its diet may “have included some hard foods,” it generally stuck to ripe fruit (White et al., 2009, p. 64, p. 80). Adding further evidence, Ardipithecus does not have “sharp, daggerlike upper canines seen in chimpanzees” (Gibbons, 2009, p. 1599) Moreover, the muzzle of Ar. Ramidus “juts out less than a chimpanzee's does,” also likening the hominid to its ancestors (Gibbons, 2009, p. 1599). However, Ardipithecus differentiates significantly from Australopithecus in the types of plants it did eat. Australopithecus has a diet “of more than 30% C4 plants” while the diet of Ar. Ramdius “vary only between ~10 and 25% C4” (White et al., 2009, p. 79). This delineates that Ardipithecus “exploited a wider range of woodland resources” than chimpanzees. It also “did but did not have access to the “open biotype foods” later consumed by Austraolopithecus (White et al., 2009, p. 79). Socially, Ardipithicus “lacks the delayed canine eruption” found in chimpanzees” (White et al., 2009, p. 79). Similar to Australopithecus, this indicates that “canine was not an important component of adult sociobehaviroal relationships” (White et al., 2009, p.

The largest of these rodents, the Josephoartigasia monesi, could weigh up to 2,200 pounds, about 17 times the size of the 130 pound capybara. This rodent was believed to have travelled from Africa to South America and may be an ancestor to Caviomorpha, which includes a variety of rodents ranging from porcupines, spiny rats, chinchillas, guinea pigs, and capybaras. Capybaras are close relatives to cavies, a member of the same order. Cavies, are much smaller than capybaras, eat a larger variety of plants, and inhabit a diverse group of environments. It’s believed that cavies and capybaras, as members of Caviidae, began diversifying anywhere from 17 mya to 18.8 mya. The capybara kept the large size of ancestors and specialized while cavies shrunk and expanded in range. The capybaras specialization, unfortunately, may cause a

Found within the Himalayan and African landscapes, lived one of the world’s unique mammals. Recent investigation of an ancient giraffe species, Sivatherium giganteum proves that the extinct mammal may have been the world’s largest ruminant (animal able to gain nutrients from plant material) mammal to ever exist.

In an attempt to find a correct phylogenetic tree, our group has found that Phylogenetic tree C shows a significant lineage. After researching, Phylogenetic Tree C seems to be an accurate depiction of hominid evolution. It shows a clear line of lineage that begins with the common ancestor A. Afarensis. To explain how the hominids connected in the lineage, our group decided to compare the skulls’ cranium width and length of braincase. We concluded that over millions of years, the width of the cranium of the hominids have increased, along with the length of braincases. Our explanation matched up with tree C respectively. The order of the width of craniums recorded are: A. Afarensis (80 mm), A. Boisei (80 mm), A. Africanus (85 mm), H. Habilis (98 mm), H. Erectus (108 mm), H. Heidelbergensis (122 mm), H. Neanderthalensis (128 mm), and H. Sapien

This suggests all animals come from previous animals, but modified from natural selection. This is shown through an arm of a monkey and wing of a bird. The bone structure is similar, but the use is quite different. Analogous structures are different species having the same function but have evolved separately, thus do not share common ancestor. An example is a bird wing and an insect wing, both used for flying. Vestigial Structures have no apparent function, but resemble previous ancestors. They are left over from evolution. This is apparent in animals with tails. These three structures all support the theory of

279). Generally speaking, these divergence times support the known New World monkey fossil record. Palaentological evidence thus far describes Doliochocebus as a fossil of cebine, in the clade that includes extant members of genus Saimiri (Szalay and Delson, 1979). Based on estimations of the origin of the subfamily Cebinae which was 18 million years ago, this fossil was in fact the stem of the subfamily. Also, Stirtonia was considered to be an alouattinin fossil (Szalay and Delson, 1979) and according to their results the split between Alouatta and the remaining members of the family occurred 16 million years ago (Opazo et al., 2006 p. 279), a result that also agrees with the fossil record. Furthermore, the fossil pitheciid Cebupithecia is one of the most complete skeletons of a fossil platirrhine and believes to be dated near the time of the most recent common ancestor of the total group. By using the molecular clock, the split between the lineage that eventually led to Callicebus and the lineage leading to the other pitheiid genera occurred after the divergence of Callicebus but before the divergence of Pithecia, Cacajao, and Chiropotes (Opazo et al,. 2006, p. 294).

The mammalian line of descent reaches back to over 300 million years. The ancient relatives of mammals were extremely different in terms of appearance from living mammals, and are often mistaken for reptiles (for example dinosaurs). In reality though, these relatives of mammals, called synapsids, are more like mammals than reptiles.

Mammals were that distinct group of species for whom DNA barcoding was proved to be successful first time and mostly human hair was used to test mammal primers[8, 53].The essential usage of DNA barcoding ranges from the evaluation of the central web for morphologically mysterious species including carnivores, in order to capture misidentified individuals using hair, skin, feathers and furthermore to reconsider critical descriptors in regards to food web framework[54-57]. Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 is particularly acknowledge as a standardized specie level barcoding region in animals [58]. Mitochondrial genes are favored over nuclear genes in case of mammals because mitochondrial genes don’t have introns; they are

The hunt for ancestor of living birds began with a specimen of Archaeopteryx. Like birds it preserves feathers along the wings and tail, furcular (fused clavicles) pubis points back, partially fused feet bones, first toe (hallux) points backward with three digits facing front and S curve shape neck, but unlike birds it also had teeth, long bony tail, unjointed ribs, belly ribs, no sternum, claws on fingers (Ostrom, 1976). Therefore, Archaeopteryx was recognized as an intermediate between birds and