A continuing theme in my blog posts is how different South America was millions of years ago compared to today. Although that is certainly true, the difference isn’t nearly so dramatic as that of Antarctica.

Today Antarctica is almost completely covered by ice, and the only mammals (other than humans) that call it home are marine mammals such as seals and sea lions. That has been true for millions of years, but if you were to go back to the Eocene period, more than 34 million years ago, you would have found Antarctica to be a very different place. The continent was forested with southern beech (Nothofagus spp.) and a variety of other plants, and a diversity of mammals were living there alongside birds and other animals. Unfortunately, fossils of these Eocene mammals are difficult to come by, so we only have hints about most of the species, but they do give us some important information about ancient Antarctic ecosystems.

At this point, you may be wondering how anyone finds fossils of any type in Antarctica, given all the ice. A mere dusting of snow usually prevents looking for fossils anywhere else in the world, so how is it possible to find them in Antarctica? The key is to look for fossils in places that aren’t completely covered by ice, at least not during the austral summer. In the case of Eocene mammals, this means working on Seymour Island, a large island located near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. This peninsula extends some 800 miles (1,300 km) north toward South America, with the result that Seymour Island is a mere 620 miles (1,000 km) from that continent’s southern tip, less than the distance between Atlanta and Miami in the US.

Traveling to Antarctica from South America requires crossing the Drake Passage, a legendary area of high winds, frigid temperatures, and rough seas. Nowadays, this is done by ship or plane, but in the deep past, the trip could have been done on foot. At the end of the Mesozoic Era and the beginning of the Cenozoic, around 70-50 million years ago, dry land joined Antarctica to both South America and Australia. These connections facilitated mammal dispersals to, from, and across what is now an ice-covered continent.

The Eocene mammal most commonly found in Antarctica is one that clearly came from South America: Notiolofos arquinotiensis. This endemic South American ungulate was quite large for its time – 900 lbs. or 400 kg, similar to a female bison – and is one of the few exceptions to the rule that South America’s native ungulates generally aren’t found outside of South America.

Notiolofos is a litoptern, the same group that includes a diversity of somewhat camel-like or deer-like species, but it belongs to the family Sparnotheriodontidae. (As far as I am aware, this is the second-longest name of any currently-recognized family of mammals*.) Sparnotheriodontids are uncommon in the fossil record, only being recorded at a handful of sites between about 50 and 45 million years in age. They are mostly known from isolated teeth, which are low-crowned and lophed and presumably were used to browse on twigs and leafy vegetation. An interesting aspect of Notiolofos arquinotiensis is that the species apparently underwent no significant evolutionary change over a period of more than 15 million years. This could be due to stable environmental conditions in Antarctica during this interval.

The other type of endemic South American ungulate that has been found in Antarctica is an early astrapothere, Antarctodon sobrali. Astrapotheres are typically among the largest mammals at Oligocene and Miocene sites in South America, often tipping the scales at a ton or more, but Antarctodon was a fraction the size of Notiolofus, similar to a sheep (65 lbs. or 30 kg).

The vast majority of mammal species discovered in Antarctica are marsupials. Like the continent’s endemic ungulates, these marsupials seem to have gotten there over dry land from South America. However, Antarctica didn’t act simply like a cul-de-sac for South American marsupials as it did for South American ungulates. Some marsupials traversed the continent and entered Australia, eventually giving rise to the great diversity of Australian species that we know today. From there, it seems that at least one lineage decided to head back home; the microbiotheres crossed Antarctica again and went back to South America. The only living members of this little-known branch of the marsupial evolutionary tree are three tiny species of monitos del monte. During the Eocene, the larger Marambiotherium glacialis, which was the size of a medium-sized opossum (5 oz or 150 g), inhabited Antarctica.

The most common marsupials in Antarctica are two species of the genus Antarctodolops, a member of the peculiar family Polydolopidae. Polydolopids are common at many Paleogene sites in South America, though despite their abundance, they are rather poorly known; only one or two skulls (depending on one’s definition of the family) have been described thus far. Polydolopids are easily recognized by their distinctive dentition, which includes a large, procumbent lower canine and a prominent, shearing, “plagiaulacoid” lower premolar.

When did these trans-continental dispersals take place? With the caveat that we are still missing lots of information, it is thought that marsupials crossed at the very end of the Cretaceous (about 70-65 million years ago), whereas ungulates like Notiolofus and Antarctodon crossed slightly later, perhaps 60-55 million years ago. The Drake Passage probably did not open until 34 million years ago, but land dispersals between South America and Antarctica had probably ceased by about 55 million years ago.

As is often the case in paleontology, the fossils found in Antarctica raise as many questions as they answer. For me, a big one is: why haven’t notoungulates been found there? Remains of notoungulates are the most common fossils at most Eocene sites in Patagonia, and if litopterns got to Antartica, one would think notoungulates would have gotten there, too. It is true that the fossil sample is small and that we are ignorant of most of the mammal species that were living there in the Eocene, but it is curious that not a single notoungulate tooth has yet been found in Antarctica given their diversity and abundance in nearby southern Argentina at the time.

This is just one of many reasons to keep returning to Antartica to find more mammal fossils. As usual, I will be anxiously awaiting to hear what my colleagues have found on their most recent expedition!

*The longest mammal family name currently in use seems to be Palaeochiropterygidae, a group of extinct bats; thanks to Christian Kammerer for this taxonomic tip!

References:

• Beck, R. 2012. An ‘ameridelphian’ marsupial from the early Eocene of Australia supports a complex model of Southern Hemisphere marsupial biogeography. Naturwissenschaften 99:715-729.
• Bond, M., M. A. Reguero, S. F. Vizcaíno, and S. A. Marenssi. 2006. A new ‘South American ungulate’ (Mammalia: Litopterna) from the Eocene of the Antarctic Peninsula. Special Publications, Geological Society of London 258:163-176.
• D’Elía, G., N. Hurtado, and A. D’Anatro. 2016. Alpha taxonomy of Dromiciops (Microbiotheriidae) with the description of 2 new species of monito del monte. Journal of Mammalogy 97:1136-1152.
• Flynn, J. J., and A. R. Wyss. 1999. New marsupials from the Eocene-Oligocene transition of the Andean Main Range, Chile. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 19:533-549.
• Gelfo, J. N. 2016. Considerations about the evolutionary stasis of Notiolofos arquinotiensis (Mammalia: Sparnotheriodontidae), Eocene of Seymour Island, Antarctica. Ameghiniana 53:316-332.
• Gelfo, J. N., G. M. López, and S. N. Santillana. 2017. Eocene ungulate mammals from West Antarctica: implications from their fossil record and a new species. Antarctic Science 29:445-455.
• Krause, J. M., W. C. Clyde, M. Ibañez-Mejía, M. D. Schmitz, T. Barnum, E. S. Bellosi, and P. Wilf. 2017. New age constraints for early Paleogene strata of central Patagonia, Argentina: Implications for the timing of South American Land Mammal Ages. Geological Society of America Bulletin 129:886-903.
• Reguero, M. A., F. J. Goin, T. Dutra, and S. A. Marenssi. 2013. Late Cretaceous/ Paleogene West Antarctica Terrestrial Biota and Its Intercontinental Affinities. Springer, New York, 120 pp.
• Soria, M. F. 1980. Una nueva y problemática forma de ungulado del Casamayorense. Actas, II Congreso Argentino de Paleontología y Bioestratigrafía y Primer Congreso Latinoamericano de Paleontología II:193-203.
• Vizcaíno, S. F., M. A. Reguero, F. J. Goin, C. P. Tambussi, and J. I. Noriega. 1998. Community structure of Eocene terrestrial vertebrates from Antarctic Penninsula; pp. 177-183 in S. Casadío (ed.), Paleógeno de América del Sur y de la Península Antártica. Asociación Paleontológica Argentina, Publicación Especial 5.