Cuvieronius
Name:
Cuvieronius
(From Cuvier).
Phonetic: Coo-ve-er-o-ne-us.
Named By: Henry Fairfield Osborn - 1923.
Synonyms: Cordillerion, Cuvieronius
hyodon, Cuvieronius tarijensis, Mastodon andium, Mastodon
humboldtii, Mastodon bolivianus, Mastotherium hyodon.
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia,
Proboscidea, Gomphotheriidae.
Species: C. hyodon (type), C.
oligobunis, C. priestleyi, C. tropicus.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: 2.7 meters tall at the shoulder.
Known locations: North and South America.
Time period: Pliocene to Pleistocene.
Fossil representation: Multiple specimens.
Cuvieronius
immediately stands out from amongst other elephants with its curved
spirally twisting trunks which are often described as narwhal-like.
However something else which this elephant is more famous for is that
at the time of writing it is one of two genera of elephants that are
known to have lived in South America, the other being Stegomastodon.
The
earliest known specimens of Cuvieronius are dated
to the early Pliocene
where populations of Cuvieronius seem to be
concentrated around the
Southern portion of the United States and Mexico. Roughly three
million years ago volcanic activity created the Isthmus of Panama, an
event that would have world changing consequences, but specifically
for the Americas this was the first time that these two continents had
been directly connected by a permanent land bridge. This triggered
another even called the Great American Interchange, where some South
American animals spread up into North America, and some North
American animals, including Cuvieronius spread
down into South
America.
As
mentioned above Cuvieronius is known to have lived
in South America
with Stegomastodon, but usually two animals
cannot share the same
niche in an ecosystem. This does not seem to have been a problem for
these two elephants however since Stegomastodon is
known from the
warmer lowland areas and Cuvieronius is associated
with higher,
cooler environments that you find associated with the Andes Mountain
range. With these two elephants living in quite different
ecosystems, competition for the same resources such as food plants
would have been minimal to non-existent.
It
is difficult to pin down an exact extinction date for Cuvieronius,
but carbon dating has revealed that Cuvieronius
was alive during the
Holocene as recently as a few thousand years ago. Remains of what
seem to have been Cuvieronius have also been found
in association with
early human settlements (particularly well known examples from
Chile), suggesting that Cuvieronius was quite
possibly hunted by
early humans. In fact human hunting is the theory that is most often
proposed as the explanation for the extinction of Cuvieronius.
Cuvieronius
was named in honour of the famous French naturalist and zoologist
Georges Cuvier. In the early nineteenth century Cuvier was
instrumental in the establishment of natural sciences such as
comparative anatomy and palaeontology. This work saw Cuvier being
instrumental in the identification of the first two dinosaurs,
Megalosaurus
and Iguanodon,
as well as being the first person to
correctly identify the pterosaur Pterodactylus
as a flying reptile
amongst many other achievements. However the man who named
Cuvieronius in honour of Georges Cuvier, Henry
Fairfield Osborn,
was no slouch himself and was responsible for naming the most famous
dinosaur of all time Tyrannosaurus,
as well as many other famous ones
such as Velociraptor,
Oviraptor
and Pentaceratops.
Further reading
- Case 3479 Cuvieronius Osborn, 1923 (Mammalia,
Proboscidea): Proposed
conservation. Bulletin Zoological Nomenclature, 66, 1-6. - S. G. Lucas
- 2009.
- The Dance of Tusks: Rediscovery of Lower Incisors in the Pan-American
Proboscidean Cuvieronius hyodon Revises Incisor
Evolution in
Elephantimorpha. - PLOS ONE. 11 (1): e0147009. - Dimila Moth�, Marco P.
Ferretti & Leonardo S. Avilla - 2016.- Extinction of North
American Cuvieronius (Mammalia: Proboscidea:
Gomphotheriidae) driven by
dietary resource competition with sympatric mammoths and mastodons. -
Paleobiology. 46 (1): 41–57. - Gregory James Smith & Larisa R.
G. DeSantis - 2020.
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