Feeding habits of Plio-Pleistocene large carnivores as revealed by the mandibular geometry

ABSTRACT

Extant large members of the order Carnivora show high variability in feeding adaptation. Morphology of their teeth and skull is a primer to predict diet in both extant and extinct species. Here I present a complete geometric morphometric survey of mandible of large (>7 kg) Carnivora in order to make paleoecological predictions for selected Plio-Pleistocene taxa. Mandibular size and shape data support a strong differentiation between families but also convergence due to functional adaptations to hunting prey. Linear discriminant function analyses are performed in order to obtain dietary predictions on fossil taxa with statistical accuracy. There is a high level of discrimination among dietary categories, especially when subsets of predator and non-predator carnivores are analyzed separately. New insights emerge for Plio-Pleistocene fossil taxa whose paleoecology was previously inferred. Mandibular size and shape data are accurate dietary predictors in large carnivores, with size being more relevant to clarify adaptations in killing prey of different size classes.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to curators and stuff of several museum institutions for kindly providing access to museum collections: P. Jenkins, L. Tomsett, R. Portela-Miguez, A. Salvador, D. Hills, J. J. Hooker, P. Brewer, and A. Currant (British Museum of Natural History, London); B. Engesser and R. Kraft (Naturhistorischen Museum, Basel); E. Cioppi and L. Rook (Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia, Università di Firenze, Florence); P. Agnelli (Museo Zoologico ‘La Specola,’ Florence); G. Doria (Museo Civico di Storia Naturale ‘G. Doria,’ Genoa); M. Fornasiero (Museo di Paleontologia Università di Padova, Padua); R. Carlini (Museo Civico di Zoologia, Rome); M. Reilly and J. Liston (Huntherian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, Glasgow); B. Sanchez, J. Morales, J. Cabarga, and J. B. Rodríguez (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid); A. Arribas (Museo Geominero, Madrid); A. Kitchener (Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh); D. Goujet, P. Tassy, and C. Signe (Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris); E. Gilissen and W. Wendelen (Royal Museum for Cerntral Africa, Tervuren, Belgium). G. Slater kindly provided images of Arctodus simus, and P. Piras and F. Lucci shared with me their database of felids. K. Kovarovic and S. Meiri provided important insights to improve the quality of the manuscript. A. Colamarco carefully tracked the progress of my work. D. Polly, J. Theodor, and two anonymous reviewers provided important insights to improve the quality of the manuscript. This research was supported by the European Community's program ‘Structuring the European Research Area’ under Synthesys at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (ES-TAF 858) and Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (FR-TAF 1680) for the project ‘The evolution of feeding habits in extinct European carnivores.’ The visit to Royal Museum for Central Africa was supported by the project ‘Eco-morphology of extant African carnivores’ (BE-TAF 4901). The present work is dedicated to the friendship of P. Raia.

Handling editor: Jessica Theodor.