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Evolution of skull shape in carnivores. 3. The origin and early radiation of the modern carnivore families1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Leonard B. Radinsky
Leonard B. Radinsky*
Affiliation:
Department of Anatomy, University of Chicago, 1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637
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Abstract

Functionally significant aspects of skull morphology were examined in Eocene miacids and in early members of the modern carnivore families to see if functional craniology might shed light on factors involved in the origin and early evolution of the modern carnivores. No key innovations are apparent at the beginning of the modern carnivore radiation, and an alternative hypothesis to account for that radiation is proposed: the radiation represents the filling of niches vacated by the extinction of several groups of archaic carnivores in the late Eocene. Differences that distinguish modern viverrids, canids, felids, and mustelids from each other today were less pronounced in the Oligocene, when these families first appeared, and provide no insights into possible ecological differences at the family level. However, body size differences among the early members of the modern carnivore families suggest that partitioning of prey resources by size may have been a factor in their initial radiation. Comparison of cranial morphology in Eocene miacids, early members of the modern carnivore families, and living carnivores allows reconstruction of the primitive conditions of carnivore skull morphology and determination of the pathways of morphological transformation that resulted in the diversity of skull morphology seen in modern carnivores.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , Summer 1982 , pp. 177 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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