Ferugliotheriidae - Range, Ecology, and Evolution

Range, Ecology, and Evolution

With its low-crowned teeth, Ferugliotherium may have been an insectivore or omnivore, like similar multituberculates such as Mesodma, which is thought to have eaten insects, other arthropods, seeds, and/or nuts. The wear on Ferugliotherium teeth suggests that the animal may have eaten some plant material. The high-crowned sudamericids are thought to have been herbivores feeding on abrasive vegetation, although their precise diet is not known. In the evolutionary history of gondwanatheres, hypsodont teeth are thought to have evolved from brachydont precursors. Gurovich hypothesizes that the anterior molariforms of sudamericids may have evolved from bladelike premolars as seen in Ferugliotherium.

Fossils of Argentinean ferugliotheriids come from the Los Alamitos (Ferugliotherium), La Colonia (Ferugliotherium and Argentodites), and Allen Formations (Trapalcotherium). All three are approximately the same age, dating to the Campanian (84–71 mya) or more likely the Maastrichtian (71–66 mya), but the La Colonia Formation is perhaps a little younger. The Los Alamitos and Allen Formations may have been deposited in a marshy environments, and the depositional environment of the La Colonia Formations may have been an estuary, tidal flat, or coastal plain.

In each of the three formations, the mammalian fauna is dominated by the archaic group Dryolestoidea; the Los Alamitos Formation has also produced the sudamericid Gondwanatherium and the possible triconodont Austroconodon. However, only seven mammalian teeth have been found in the Allen Formation. All three also contain remains of numerous other animals, including dinosaurs, amphibians, and fish.

The Santa Rosa fossil site, where LACM 149371 was found, is in the Ucayali Region of Peru. The Santa Rosa fauna also contains fossils of various unique species of marsupials and hystricognath rodents, a possible bat, and some notoungulates (a unique extinct group of South American ungulates). The age of this fauna is unclear, and estimates range from near the Eocene–Oligocene boundary (~35 mya) to the late Oligocene (~25 mya). The Santa Rosa mammals may have lived in a savanna habitat that contained rivers.

The range of the Ferugliotheriidae is narrower than that of Sudamericidae; sudamericids have been recorded from the Late Cretaceous (Gondwanatherium) and Paleocene (Sudamerica) of Argentina, the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar (Lavanify) and India (Bharattherium), the Middle Eocene of Antarctica (probably Sudamerica), and perhaps the Cretaceous of Tanzania (TNM 02067, tentatively referred to Sudamericidae). Nevertheless, if LACM 149371 is a ferugliotheriid, it would likely represent the youngest record of gondwanatheres.