Journal
PALAEOGEOGRAPHY PALAEOCLIMATOLOGY PALAEOECOLOGY
Volume 449, Issue -, Pages 463-474Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.02.017
Keywords
Carbon-13; Nitrogen-15; Collagen; Smilodon; Pampas; Last Glacial Maximum
Funding
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) [BO 3487/4-1]
- Consejo Nacional de investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET) [PIP 164]
- Agencia Nacional de Promocion Cientifica y Tecnologica (ANPCyT) [PICT 2011-309]
- Universidad Nacional de Lujan (UNLU) [CDD-CB 328-14]
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The sabretooth cat Smilodon populator was the largest felid in South America. It appears in the fossil record in the Early Pleistocene, as an immigrant from North America, and becomes extinct around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. The carbon and nitrogen stable isotopic values of collagen were measured for skeletal remains from Smilodon specimens ranging in age from 25 to 10 kyr BP, for the first time in the Pampas region of Argentina. By comparison with similar values obtained on co-eval predators such as Protocyon (large canid) and Panthera onca (jaguar) and a range of potential prey, such as giant ground sloths, glyptodontids, Macrauchenia, Toxodon, equids, cervids, and rodents, it could be established that Smilodon consumed essentially large prey from open landscape, such as Macrauchenia and giant ground sloths during the last 15,000 years of the Late Pleistocene in the Pampa region. It was possibly competing with the large canid Protocyon but the jaguar was apparently feeding on smaller size prey. A more humid climate at the beginning of the Holocene might have been unfavorable to this large predator and could have contributed to its extinction. These results also provide an important insight to understand the ecological processes involved in the Great American Biotic Interchange. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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