Preface

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume is a product of the input of many, and we here acknowledge those individuals, institutions, and agencies involved in general ways that contributed to its completion. Acknowledgment of specific contributions to the research undertaken to complete individual chapters in this volume, including financial support, is reserved for chapter acknowledgments.

In essence, this SVP memoir started with the discovery of the holotype specimen of Adalatherium hui by J. Rabarison (Université d’Antananarivo), and then the collection of it by both Rabarison and M. Gottfried (Michigan State University), in July 1999. The specimen was initially prepared by V. Heisey in the Vertebrate Fossil Preparation Laboratory at Stony Brook University (SBU) in 2002 and 2003. J. Groenke, then also of the Vertebrate Fossil Preparation Laboratory at SBU but now at Ohio University, was responsible for some subsequent preparation, for molding and casting, and for readying the specimen for various sessions of micro-computed tomography (µCT) scanning.

For permission to conduct field research in Madagascar in 1999, we sincerely thank the Ministries of Mines and Higher Education of the Republic of Madagascar and A. Rasoamiaramanana and the late B. Rakotosamimanana of the Département de Paléontologie, Université d’Antananarivo. For logistical assistance, we are grateful to P. Wright of the Institute for the Conservation of Tropical Environments, B. Andriamihaja and the staff of the Madagascar Institut pour la Conservation des Ecosystèmes Tropicaux, and the villagers of Berivotra. We also thank the entire field crew of 1999 (G. Buckley, M. Carrano, K. Curry Rogers, M. Gottfried, J. Hartman, C. Norevelo, P. O’Connor, J. Rabarison, L. Randriamiaramanana, R. Rogers, K. Samonds, S. Sampson, and R. Terry) for their dedicated efforts.

We thank the many authors who contributed to chapters in this memoir for their expertise and collaboration and the reviewers of the various chapters for their comments and insights, all of which have improved content and presentation immeasurably. We are also grateful to L. Werdelin, R. Irmis, and P. O'Connor, in their capacities as SVP Memoir Series editors, for shepherding the various chapters through the review process, as well as Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology (JVP) senior editor A. Turner, JVP managing editors H. Maddin and J. Sterli, and J. Jacobs of Taylor & Francis LLC for meticulous final editing and oversight through the production process. Finally, we are also grateful to the journal Nature for permission to include various figures or parts of figures in this volume that are reproduced or modified from figures in Krause, Hoffmann, Hu, et al. (2020).

Note to Proofs: Another gondwanatherian taxon, Magallanodon baikashkenke, from the Late Cretaceous of Chile, was described by Goin et al. (2020) on the basis of four isolated teeth after this and all other manuscripts for chapters in this memoir were accepted for publication. We note the occurrence here but will not consider the taxon elsewhere in this memoir.

Goin, F. J., A. G. Martinelli, S. Soto-Acuña, E. C. Vieytes, L. M. E. Manrı́quez, R. A. Fernández, J. P. Pino, C. Trevisan, J. Kaluza, M. A. Reguero, M. Leppe, H. Ortiz, D. Rubilar-Rogers, and A. O. Vargas. 2020. First Mesozoic mammal from Chile: the southernmost record of a Late Cretaceous gondwanatherian. Boletı́n del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, Chile 69:5–31.