Undergraduate Honors Thesis

 

Uintatherium anceps from the Uinta Formation, Piceance Creek Basin, Colorado With Implications on the morphological variation in Uintatherium anceps Public Deposited

https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/9s161744h
Abstract
  • Uintatheres are an early Paleogene group of large-bodied herbivores recognizable by their bizarre knobby cranial horn-like protuberances and saber-tooth canines. The uintatheres represent one of the earliest lineages of mammals to obtain a large body size and were the biggest land animals of their time during the Middle Eocene (ca. 49 - 39 Ma)

    Herein I describe a skull and fragmentary postcrania of a uintathere that was discovered on a construction site in the Piceance Creek Basin near Meeker, Colorado in 2009. The skull UCM 102271 represents the most complete uintathere fossil described to date from the Piceance Creek Basin. UCM 102271 was compared with uintathere skulls held in the collections at the University of Wyoming and the Utah Field House of Natural History State Park Museum.

    Distinguishing characters of UCM 102271 include a dorsally elevated parietal horn, a temporal fossa without typical posterodorsal expansion, and an M3 with a molar fossa at the lingual base of the metacone. Measurements of the skull are smaller than average for Uintatherium anceps. The skull length and upper tooth row length are is 15% and 6% smaller than the average for Uintatherium anceps.

    The size and morphology of the skull confidently places it within the genus Uintatherium. The addition of UCM 102271 increases the morphologic variation observed in Uintatherium anceps. These findings further support the need for the reevaluation of species level taxonomy for Uintatherium anceps and other uintatheres.

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  • 2021-11-01
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  • 2021-11-11
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