Evolution of the sabertooth mandible: A deadly ecomorphological specialization

Title
Evolution of the sabertooth mandible: A deadly ecomorphological specialization
Publication Date
2018-05-01
Author(s)
Piras, Paolo
Silvestro, Daniele
Carotenuto, Francesco
Castiglione, Silvia
Kotsakis, Anastassios
Maiorino, Leonardo
Melchionna, Marina
Mondanaro, Alessandro
Sansalone, Gabriele
Serio, Carmela
Vero, Veronica Anna
Raia, Pasquale
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Place of publication
Netherlands
DOI
10.1016/j.palaeo.2018.01.034
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/26946
Abstract
Saber-toothed cats were armed with formidable weapons. They evolved a number of highly derived morphological features, most notably a pair of extremely long upper canines, which makes them unique within the felid family. Although the sabertooth character evolved several times among carnivorous mammals, sabertooth clades mostly had disjunctive occurrences both in space and time, and no sabertooth is alive today. We studied the rates of phenotypic and taxonomic diversification in the mandible of sabertooths, as compared to the rates calculated for both extinct and extant conical toothed cats. We found that the mandible's shape and physical properties in sabertooth clades evolved at distinctly higher rates than the rest of the felid tree. In addition, sabertooths had similar speciation rate to conical toothed cats, but statistically higher extinction rate. The wealth of morphological specializations required to be a sabertooth, and their tendency to focus on large-sized species as prey, was likely responsible for such high extinction rate, and for the peculiar, disjunctive patterns of sabertooth clade occurrence in the fossil record.
Link
Citation
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, v.496, p. 166-174
ISSN
1872-616X
0031-0182
Start page
166
End page
174

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