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Paleoecology of Nebraska's Ungulates During the Eocene-Oligocene

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Paleoecology of Nebraska's Ungulates During the Eocene-Oligocene University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Department Atmospheric Sciences of Spring 4-16-2013 PALEOECOLOGY OF NEBRASKA’S UNGULATES DURING THE EOCENE-OLIGOCENE CLIMATE TRANSITION Grant S. Boardman University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/geoscidiss Part of the Geochemistry Commons, Geology Commons, Paleobiology Commons, and the Paleontology Commons Boardman, Grant S., "PALEOECOLOGY OF NEBRASKA’S UNGULATES DURING THE EOCENE-OLIGOCENE CLIMATE TRANSITION" (2013). Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. 36. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/geoscidiss/36 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations & Theses in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. PALEOECOLOGY OF NEBRASKA’S UNGULATES DURING THE EOCENE- OLIGOCENE CLIMATE TRANSITION by Grant Stanley Boardman A DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Major: Earth & Atmospheric Sciences (Geology) Under the Supervision of Professor Ross Secord Lincoln, Nebraska May, 2013 PALEOECOLOGY OF NEBRASKA’S UNGULATES DURING THE EOCENE- OLIGOCENE CLIMATE TRANSITION Grant Stanley Boardman, Ph.D. University of Nebraska, 2013 Adviser: Ross Secord The White River Group (WRG) preserves the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition (EOCT), an interval of global cooling and drying during the onset of Antarctic glaciation. In the Great Plains, a shift from forested conditions to drier woodland-savanna biomes is hypothesized to have occurred at this time. I test this hypothesis through the analyses of several paleoenvironmental proxies on the teeth of 12 WRG ungulate species: stable carbon and oxygen isotopes from tooth enamel, and mesowear and microwear texture. The EOCT shift toward more open habitats and lower vegetation density under drying climates should have resulted in an increase in mean carbon isotope values in vegetation and increase in abrasive ingesta in ungulates. These trends, in turn, should be reflected in the carbon isotope values of WRG ungulate teeth, as well as in their patterns of meso- and microwear. Data gathered for this study are grouped into two time-averaged faunas: one from the Chadronian North American land-mammal age (NALMA) (latest Eocene) and one from the Orellan NALMA (earliest Oligocene). Isotopic results suggest that both faunas inhabited drier, open canopied biomes, such as woodland-savanna or scrubland, and that wetter habitats became restricted in extent during the Orellan due to decreasing rainfall. Mesowear results suggest that the diets of several taxa living in open habitats during the Chadronian were already abrasive enough to suggest mixed-feeding, and that all but one range-through taxon had static diets through this interval. Only the oreodont Merycoidodon sp. shows evidence for having had a more abrasive diet during the Orellan than it did during the Chadronian, suggesting that the expansion of open habitats led to greater utilization of grasses by this oreodont. Results from microwear texture analyses of extant taxa suggest that it is a useful tool in characterizing diets for WRG species. These results provide a better understanding of the effects of climate change on mammals in Nebraska during the EOCT. AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank the members of my dissertation committee (Drs. Ross Secord, David Loope, R.M. Joeckel, Tracy Frank, and Patricia W. Freeman), all of whom have been very supportive and constructive throughout my time at the University of Nebraska. This project examined museum collections curated at the University of Nebraska State Museum (UNSM). I am grateful to George Corner, Greg Brown, Rob Skolnick, Ellen Stepleton, and Thomas E. Labedz for the help they have provided me over the course of my graduate work at UNL, from locating and prepping specimens to being there just to discuss problems and lend support. I would also like to thank Dr. Robert Timm at the University of Kansas for access to the extant mammal collections, and to Drs. Brian Beatty and Matthew Mihlbachler (NYIT) for their helpful comments and for providing molds of extant taxa from the American Museum of Natural History and Smithsonian collections. I thank all the folks I have worked with in the field. I thank Dr. Jason Moore (University of New Mexico) and all of his students for help collecting and identifying fossils in northwestern Nebraska. Dr. Dennis Terry (Temple University) and Dr. Hannan LaGarry (Oglala Lakota College) helped me immensely in familiarizing myself with White River stratigraphy. I also thank my comrades, Zack Kita (UNL) and William E. Lukens (Temple University), and my McNair student, Nathan Lilienthal (UNL), for their friendship and assistance in the field. I am also grateful to Barbara Beasley and the U.S. Forest Service in Chadron, NE, for providing vertebrate paleontology collecting permits to my adviser Ross Secord. I thank all contributors to the completion of this work. I thank Dr. Alessandro Zanazzi (Utah Valley University) for use of his isotopic data. I thank Angie Fox for her help in preparing figures for publication. I owe a large debt to both Dr. Robert M. Hunt Jr. (UNSM) and Dr. Donald R. Prothero (LACM) for their helpful discussions and encouragement. Dr. David Fox (University of Minnesota) for helpful comments during the manuscript review process and for the use of his LOX lab standard, which was important to providing rigor to my isotopic analysis. I extend my thanks to Dr. Peter S. Ungar at the University of Arkansas for his patience and gratis use of his confocal lab in Fayetteville. Without him the microwear texture portion of this project would not have been possible. Funding for my work was provided by a Geological Society of America Graduate Research grant and a Nebraska Geological Society Yatkola-Edwards award. This project never would have been possible without support from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and UNSM. I am also grateful to the late Dr. George E. Jakway, for his gracious support in funding this project. My wife, Patricia, has been very supportive of me throughout my years here at the University of Nebraska, where she had to suffer through “real” winters. I promise you we will move somewhere warmer in the future. I dedicate this dissertation to you myfanwy. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………….....ii Author’s Acknowledgments……………….………………………………………...iv List of Figures……………………………………………………………………….vii List of Tables………………………………………………………………………..viii Chapter Page 1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………...1 2. Stable isotope paleoecology of White River ungulates during the…………10 Eocene-Oligocene climate transition in northwestern Nebraska 3. Local feeding ecology of ungulates from northwestern Nebraska………….71 during the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition 4. Testing the utility of dental microwear texture as a proxy for diet in……..101 extant and fossil non-ruminant ungulates 5. CONCLUSIONS……………………………………………………….…133 vii List of Figures Page Chapter 2 Figure 1 Location Map…….………………………………………………56 Figure 2 Toadstool Park Stratigraphic Section……………………………57 Figure 3 Predictive Habitat Model…………...……………………………58 Figure 4 Stable δ13C and δ18O Mean Value Scatterplot...…………………59 Chapter 3 Figure 5 Mesowear Variables……………..……………………………….92 Figure 6 Principal Components Analysis………………………………….93 Chapter 4 Figure 7 Photosimulations of Microwear Surfaces….……………………123 Figure 8 Box-and-whisker Plots of Microwear Texture Data….…………124 viii List of Tables Page Chapter 2 Table 1 Summary of Hypothesized Habitat/Diets…………………..……....60 Table 2 Descriptive Statistics for Chadronian taxa……………………..…..61 Table 3 Descriptive Statistics for Orellan taxa………………...……...…….63 Table 4 Statistical Comparison to Possible Biomes/Habitats……...…….….65 Table 5 Statistical Comparison to Previous Isotope Data………….……..…66 Appendix 1 Raw Data from Isotope Study…………………..…….….…….67 Chapter 3 Table 6 Results of Mesowear Analysis…………………..…………….……94 Table 7 Principal Components Analysis Statistics…………………….……95 Appendix 2 Extant Mesowear Raw Data…………………………….….…..96 Appendix 3 Fossil Mesowear Raw Data……………….……………….…..97 Chapter 4 Table 8 Descriptive Statistics of Extant Microwear Texture ………….…..125 Table 9 Descriptive Statistics of Fossil Microwear Texture.………………126 Table 10 Analytical Statistics……………………………………..….……127 Table 11 Results of Discriminant Function Analysis…………..……….…129 Appendix 4 Raw Microwear Texture Data………………. .…..………….130 1 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The Eocene-Oligocene climate transition (EOCT), is often cited as the most important interval of climate change during the Cenozoic because it heralds the switch from the warmer, equable, global greenhouse climates of the late Mesozoic and early Paleogene to the cooler, more seasonal, icehouse climates. Marine proxy data suggest significant cooling of mid- to high-latitude ocean temperatures (5-6°C) over a short interval during the earliest Oligocene, beginning at about 33.7 Ma (Zachos et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2009). This cooling coincided with the onset of continental glaciation in Antarctica
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