CarniFOSS: A database of the body mass of fossil carnivores

Motivation Body mass is one of the most important determinants of animal ecology. Unlike other important traits it is also readily inferable from fossils and it is therefore one of the only traits that can be directly analysed and compared between fossil and contemporary communities. Despite this, no comprehensive database of the body mass of larger clades of extinct species exists. Analysis of fossils has therefore been restricted to small clades or to smaller, potentially biased, subsets of species. We here describe CarniFoss, an open-access database of body masses of all 1,322 extinct species of non-pinniped Carnivoramorpha and two related extinct groups of carnivorous mammals, Hyaenodonta and Oxyaenidae. Main types of variables contained We gathered lengths of teeth of fossil and extant species and body mass for extant species and a few of the best-known fossil species. Following this we estimated body mass for all species through phylogenetic imputation. Spatial location and grain Global, terrestrial. Time period and grain We collected data on all known species within the focal groups. The known species all lived in the Palaeogene, Neogene or Quaternary (i.e., the last 66 Myr). Major taxa and level of measurement We searched for data on reported tooth size of all described species of Carnivoramorpha (excluding pinnipeds) and selected extinct related groups (Hyaenodonta and Oxyaenidae). We combined this with measured body mass for all extant species and inferred body mass based on long-bones for selected extinct species, as well as a species-level phylogeny including all extant and extinct species in the group, and inferred the body mass for all species using phylogenetic imputation. Software format Data are provided as a series of .csv files, with all metadata in a separate PDF file.

Automated summary

Body mass is a crucial determinant in animal ecology and has the potential to be inferred from fossils. However, there is a lack of comprehensive databases for the body mass of extinct species. The CarniFoss database aims to fill this gap by providing body mass data for a large number of extinct carnivorous mammals.