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Morphometric Analysis of the Mandible of Primitive Sabertoothed Felids from the late Miocene of Spain

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Abstract

How sabertoothed felids have evolved their iconic morphology remains unclear because of the patchy fossil record of early machairodontines. Batallones localities in the Madrid region (Spain) have the potential to clarify this as two sites have yielded hundreds of fossils of the early machairodontines Promegantereon ogygia and Machairodus aphanistus. Previous analyses suggested that these two sites are not contemporaneous and a morphological drift between cavities was described for these two species; characterizing intraspecific variability is thus important to better understand the evolution of machairodontines. To tackle this issue, we modelled 62 felid mandibles in 3D using a laser scanner. We applied 3D geometric morphometrics (3D GM) and linear morphometrics on these models to test for differences in populations and to better characterize the morphology of early machairodontines. Both linear measurements and 3D data reveal an absence of morphological changes in mandible shape between the two sites. Batallones machairodontines are closer to felines than to other, more derived machairodontines in mandibular morphology, suggesting the existence of rapid shift in the mandibular shape between primitive and derived members of the clade. Our analysis did not reveal any allometric relationship between the overall shape of the mandible when studied with 3D GM and body size. Finally, we reveal a previously overlooked diversity in felid mandibular condyles, with machairodontines having much larger and medially inclined condyles.

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Data Availability

Tables are available as ESM 2 and ESM3. PTS files are available as ESM5 and three-dimensional surface scan are available in the MorphoSource repository (https://www.morphosource.org/dashboard/collections/000344367/) on reasonable request.

Code Availability

The R script used for the analysis is available as ESM4.

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Acknowledgements

NC is supported by a grant of Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.–FNRS (FRIA grant number FRIA FC 36251). VF is supported by a grant of Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.–FNRS(MIS F.4511.19). This study is part of the research projects CGL2015-68333-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and 201730I085 (CSIC). JM and MJS are members of the Research Group CSIC 641538 (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid, Spain); also, MJS is member of the Research Group FOCONTUR (Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis, Spain). We would like to thank Ángel Luis Garvia (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Spain) and Dr Juan Francisco Pastor (Universidad de Valladolid, Spain) for kindly loaning the specimens used for comparison, and the government of the Comunidad de Madrid (Spain) for providing funding for the excavations at Cerro de los Batallones sites. For access to the surface scan data of Dinofelis barlowi, we thank the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History, South Africa, and Dr. Justin Adams of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, Monash University, Australia. For sharing the 3D models of Lynx rufus and Puma concolor we thank respectively the WitmerLab at Ohio University and the Illinois State Museum (USA). Also, we thank Prof. Jack Tseng and his colleagues for sharing models of Smilodon fatalis and Panthera pardus; the collection of which was funded by the National Science Foundation (DEB-1257572) and the American Museum of Natural History Frick Postdoctoral Fellowships. All these files were downloaded from www.MorphoSource.org, Duke University. Finally, we thank the editors Dr. John Wible and Dr. Darin Croft as well as our two reviewers Dr. Michael Morlo and Dr. Camille Grohé for their helpful and constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Funding

NC is supported by a grant of Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.–FNRS (FRIA grant number FC 36251). VF is supported by a grant of Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique F.R.S.–FNRS(MIS F.4511.19). This study is part of the research projects CGL2015-68333-P (MINECO/FEDER, UE) and 201730I085 (CSIC). JM and MJS are members of the Research Group CSIC 641538 (Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, Madrid, Spain); also, MJS is a member of the Research Group FOCONTUR (Fundación Conjunto Paleontológico de Teruel-Dinópolis).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Evolution and Diversity Dynamics Lab, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, Liège, 4000, Belgium

    Narimane Chatar & Valentin Fischer

  2. Departamento de Paleobiología, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales-CSIC, C/José Gutiérrez Abascal, 2., 28006, Madrid, Spain

    Gema Siliceo, Mauricio Antón, Jorge Morales & Manuel J. Salesa

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  1. Narimane Chatar
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  2. Valentin Fischer
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Correspondence to Narimane Chatar.

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Chatar, N., Fischer, V., Siliceo, G. et al. Morphometric Analysis of the Mandible of Primitive Sabertoothed Felids from the late Miocene of Spain. J Mammal Evol 28, 753–771 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-021-09541-0

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