University of Florida Thesis Or Dissertation
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FEEDING ECOLOGY OF ANCIENT AND MODERN MAMMALS FROM AMAZONIA: AN ISOTOPIC APPROACH By JULIA VICTORIA TEJADA-LARA A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2015 © 2015 Julia Victoria Tejada-Lara To all those people that risk their lives to protect Amazonian forests ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, to my advisor, Bruce MacFadden, thanks to whom I had the opportunity to pursue graduate studies in the United States. The confidence he granted at accepting me as a graduate student has been a crucial step of my career and of my life. Realizing how difficult the adaptation to a new country (in my case for the first time) can be, he helped me in different ways and made me feel I was not alone. The reading of his works while I was an undergrad in Peru inspired me and nurtured my interest in paleontology. I can sincerely say that Bruce MacFadden has served as an inspiration both as a scientist and as a person and would like to express how honored I feel to be one of his students. To my committee members Jonathan Bloch and Karen Bjorndal for their support and advices during the duration of my project. To Jon, I would also like to thank his excitement in some aspects of my project which were highly encouraging. To Douglas Jones for finding time in his extremely busy agenda to stop by my office and ask about my progress and my project, for his sense of humor, and for helping me in my quest for dead sloths. To Pierre-Olivier Antoine for the countless times he has helped me and advised me, for his integrity, and for being one of the nicest people I was fortunate to meet. To Carlos Jaramillo for kindly help me numerous times in personal and scientific matters even before I ask for them. Fossils included in this study were collected on numerous and hard field expeditions, this work would not be possible without all the people that participated on them. I would like to especially thank John Flynn and Patrice Baby. Ana Balcarcel was the best field mate I could ever imagine. Numerous people and institutions were essential for the development of this thesis. I am grateful to the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) for granting me 4 the Lucy Dickinson Student Award. I would like to thank Victor Pacheco (Department of Mammalogy, Museo de Historia Natural-UNMSM) for allowing me to take samples of the specimens under his care, and Melissa Del Alcazar for assisting at sampling collection. Lizette Bermudez (Zoológico de Huachipa, Lima-Perú) kindly donated dead specimens from the zoo under her direction and helped providing information on modern sloths. Craig Pugh, Larry Killmar, Ray Ball, and Heather Henry from the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Florida, for providing one of the Choloepus specimens used in this study. To Jason Curtis and George Kamenov (Department of Geological Sciences, University of Florida) for help and advices during the isotopic and rare elemental analyses. To Jorge Moreno and the PCP-PIRE interns for making the effort at trying to collect buried modern sloths. To Jaime Turpo for help processing food samples for the isotopic analyses and Manuel Burga for assisting me at MUSM. The fossils used in this thesis were collected with funds provided by the ECLIPSE Program of the CNRS (France), the American Museum of Natural History (New York, USA), and with the kindly help of Badis Kouidrat of Devanlay Peru SAC. The different analyses were carried out with funds from the Florida Museum of Natural History and the PCP-PIRE project (NSF PIRE 0966884). Many people made my life happier and more enjoyable in Gainesville, among them Luz Helena Oviedo, Leonor Suarez, Fabianny Herrera, Benjamin Himschoot, Chanika Symister, Sean Moran, Carly Manz, Jason Bourque, Sarah Allen, Diego Ramirez, Paul Morse, Ivelisse Ruiz, Thomas Knight, Gerardo Nunez, Tania Chavarria, Elena Ortiz, Jenna Moore, Angélica García, Angelo Soto, Ummat Somjee, and many others. 5 My parents have always been a source of inspiration and taught by example the importance of exceeding one-self in every endeavor, the meaning of hard-work, and to always be driven by honesty and correctness in every action. I thank my brothers for their support and for make me feel that time and distance are meaningless variables between us. Finally, I would like to thank Rodolfo Salas, for being who he is, for introducing me to the world of paleontology with his endless passion, for his love, for making me laugh, and for making me feel the most important person in the world. Thanks to him, and also to some luck and natural stubbornness from my part, I was able to make passion the driving force of my life and to accomplish the few accomplishments I had. Paleontology and happiness are linked to me and Rodolfo is the one who knots them tightly. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 4 LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................ 9 LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 10 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... 11 ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 14 Background ............................................................................................................. 14 Goals of this Contribution ........................................................................................ 17 Middle Miocene in Tropical South America and Study Sites ................................... 17 Isotopic Analyses: Interest, Previous Studies, and Challenges .............................. 20 Diagenesis, Rare Earth Elements Analysis, and Carbon Isotope Enrichment ........ 21 REE Analysis .................................................................................................... 23 Carbon Isotope Enrichment .............................................................................. 24 2 MATERIALS AND METHODS ................................................................................ 27 Taxa and Teeth Analyzed for Isotope and REE Analyses ...................................... 27 Rare Earth Elemental (REE) Analysis..................................................................... 29 Isotopic Analysis ..................................................................................................... 30 13 Dental Tissue-to-Diet C Enrichment of Modern Sloths (Ɛ*bioapatite-diet) ................... 31 3 RESULTS ............................................................................................................... 33 REE ........................................................................................................................ 33 Isotope Enrichment ................................................................................................. 34 Isotopic Structure (δ13C) of Mammals from Modern Amazonia ............................... 36 Isotopic Signatures of Fossil Mammals from Proto-Amazonia: δ13C ....................... 39 4 DISCUSSION ......................................................................................................... 54 Madre de Dios (Peru, Amazonia) and Ituri (Congo, Africa): Two Different Closed-Canopy Forests ....................................................................................... 54 Feeding Ecology of Fossil Mammals from Proto-Amazonia .................................... 55 Amazonia vs Proto-Amazonia Canopy Structure .................................................... 57 5 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................... 62 7 APPENDIX: RARE EARTH ELEMENTS (REE) ANALYSIS .......................................... 65 LITERATURE CITED .................................................................................................... 71 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ............................................................................................ 79 8 LIST OF TABLES Table page 3-1 Isotopic signatures (δ13C and δ18O) of dental bioapatite of modern mammals from Peruvian Amazonia. ................................................................................... 47 3-2 Isotopic signatures of the sloths and their food analyzed to calculate the ε*diet-enamel.. .................................................................................................... 49 3-3 δ13C and δ18O of tooth enamel and outer dentine of fossil mammals from Miocene proto-Amazonia. ................................................................................... 51 3-4 Descriptive statistics for δ13C of fossil mammals. .............................................. 52 A-1 REE data (normalized to PAAS) for specimens analyzed during this study. ...... 65 A-2 REE Indices ........................................................................................................ 69 9 LIST OF FIGURES Figure page 1-1 Map of Peru with the location of the two sites where the fossil vertebrates used in this study were found, Iquitos (A) and Fitzcarrald (B)............................. 26 3-1 Rare earth element (REEN) signatures for the four localities