Peltephilidae (meaning "armor-liking") is a
family of
South Americancingulates (armadillos) that lived for over 40 million years, but peaked in diversity towards the end of the
Oligocene and beginning of the
Miocene in what is now
Argentina. They were exclusive to South America due to its geographic isolation at the time, one of many of the continent's strange endemic families. Peltephilids are one of the earliest known cingulates, diverging from the rest of Cingulata in the
Early Eocene.
History of research
Fossils of peltephilids were first unearthed in the 1880s by
Argentine paleontologist
Carlos Ameghino, who had been searching for mammal remains in the
Miocene-aged strata of the
Santa Cruz Formation in
Barrancas del Río Santa Cruz in
Santa Cruz,
Argentina.[1] The outcrops that were visited had previously been mentioned by
Francisco Moreno, who mentioned the discovery of
cingulate fossils from the locale in 1882.[2][1] The material recovered by Ameghino was later described by his brother
Florentino, who was one of the most prolific paleontologists of the 19th century.[3] Florentino Ameghino went on to name 11 species of armadillo based on the remains collected by Carlos, including two species of a new genus he dubbed called Peltephilus.[4][1] The fossils were very fragmentary, consisting purely of unusual, isolated
osteoderms (bony "scales" in the skin) that he believed were of a
dasypodid.[4] Even more strange osteoderms were found by Carlos in later expeditions to the exposures of the Santa Cruz Formation until, resulting in the discovery of a skull and associated osteoderms from
Monte Observacion, which he dubbed Peltephilus ferox.[5][6] Ameghino noted the strange nature of the
skull, inspiring him to create the family Peltephilidae three years later.[7]
Of the six established genera of peltephilid, four of them were named by Ameghino between 1887 and 1904.[8][9][4] Since Ameghino's death, the genera Parapeltecoelus in 1938[10] and Ronwolffia in 2017 have been dubbed, both known from osteoderms and skull material.[9]
Classification
Peltephilids were not recognized as a distinct family of cingulates until 1894, when the discovery of several distinctly short, horned skulls in association with unusual osteoderms, which had been described previously as Peltephilus in 1887, was reported by Argentine paleontologist
Florentino Ameghino. Since 1887, four more peltephilid genera represented by at least 12 species have been named,[11][12][13] all of which are from the Cenozoic deposits of Argentina,[11][14][4] Chile,[15][16] and Bolivia.[9] Several indeterminate fossils have also been mentioned in literature, including a Paleogene-aged find in Peru.[17]
The family Peltephilidae is within the order Cingulata, which contains all
pampatheres,
pachyarmatheres,
glyptodonts, and extant armadillo clades.[18] Peltephilidae is theorized to have split off from the rest of Cingulata in the
Paleocene, just after cingulates diverged from
Pilosa and other
xenarthrans in the Late Cretaceous.[9]
^Moreno, F. P. (1882). ... Patagonia resto de un antiguo continente hoy sumerjido, contribuciones al estudio de las colecciones del Museo Antropológico y arqueológico. Pablo C. Coni.
^Podgorny, I. (2021). Florentino Ameghino y hermanos. Edhasa.
^
abcdAmeghino, F. (1887). Enumeración sistemática de las especies de mamíferos fósiles coleccionados por Carlos Ameghino en los terrenos eocenos de la Patagonia austral y depositados en el Museo de La Plata. Boletín del Museo de la Plata.
^Ameghino, F. (1891). Nuevos restos de mamiferos fosiles descubiertos por Carlos Ameghino en al Eoceno inferior de la Patagonia austral. Rev. Argentina His. Nat., 1, 289-328.
^Moreno, F. P., & Mercerat, A. (1891). Nota sobre algunas especies de un género aberrante de los Dasypoda (Eoceno de Patagonia) conservadas en el Museo de La Plata. Revista del Museo de La Plata, 1891.
^Ameghino, F. (1894). Enumération synoptique des espèces de mammifères fossiles des formations éocènes de Patagonie. Imp. de PE Coni é hijos.
^Ameghino, F. (1904). NUEVAS ESPECIES DE MAMÍFEROS CRETACEOS Y TERCIARIOS. In Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina (Vol. 58, p. 35).
^Scillato-Yané, G. J. (1980). Catálogo de los Dasypodidae fósiles (Mammalia, Edentata) de la República Argentina. In Actas II Congreso Argentino de Paleontología y Bioestratigrafía y I Congreso latinoamericano de Paleontología, Buenos Aires (Vol. 3, pp. 7-36).
^Bordas, A. F. (1936). Los Peltateloidea de la colección Ameghino. Peltephiloda.(Infraorden de los Xenarthra). Physis, 12(41), 1-18.
^Vizcaino, S. F., Fernicola, J. C., & Bargo, M. S. (2012). Paleobiology of Santacrucian glyptodonts and armadillos (Xenarthra, Cingulata). Early Miocene paleobiology in Patagonia: high-latitude paleocommunities of the Santa Cruz Formation, 194-215.
^Boivin, M., Marivaux, L., Pujos, F., Salas-Gismondi, R., Tejada-Lara, J., Varas-Malca, R. M., & Antoine, P. O. (2018). Early Oligocene caviomorph rodents from Shapaja, Peruvian Amazonia. Palaeontographica A, 311(1-6), 87-156.