mardi 11 juillet 2017

July 10th, 2017

Given the task of enumerating animals by strangeness, the extinct Macrauchenia would most likely find itself pretty high on the list. It appears to have traits from the llama, camel, rhinoceros, and a small elephant-like trunk to top it all off. Charles Darwin found a partial skeleton in Argentina on his travels aboard the HMS Beagle, yet was unable to pin down the exact origin of the creature. Recently, zoologists have confirmed that Macrauchenia was a relative of Odd-Toed Ungulates (or more technically Perissodactyla), which today includes the horses, rhinos, and tapirs.

Bonus 1:
One extant species with a somewhat similar 'mini-trunk' is the Saiga Antelope found in the Eurasian Steppe. However, it's an Even-Toed Ungulate, meaning it's not directly related to the Macrauchenia. The Saiga Antelope is critically endangered, and faces numerous threats such as horn-hunters for Chinese medicine, recreational hunting, habitat loss, and climate change. With the loss of almost the entire Mongolian population in 2016 to plague there is a good chance the species will soon join the Macrauchenia as one for the history books.

Bonus 2:
Macrauchenia and another extinct relative (Neocaliphrium) seem to be the only two in their order to have survived the Great American Interchange. This was a period about 3 million years ago in which - on account of the newly formed Isthmus of Panama - South American animals and North American animals were able to switch continents, and they did so in large quantity on account of environmental pressures, threatening endemic populations upon their arrival.

-E

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