Chapalmalania ( lat. Chapalmalania ) is an extinct genus of raccoon family mammals that existed in the Pliocene in South America from 5.3 to 1.8 million years ago. The generic name is from the Chapadmalal Formation, Buenos Aires province , where the fossils were found.
| † Chapalmalanias | ||||||||||||
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| Chapalmalania Ameghino , 1908 | ||||||||||||
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Despite its relationship to small raccoons and coati , chapalmalania was a large animal. Body size was 1.5 m, the tail was short. In appearance, chapalmalania resembled a large panda . Due to the large size, its fossil remains were initially taken as bear.
Chapalmalania was an evolutionary descendant of the Cyonasua dog-coati, who traveled from Central America to the South in the Late Miocene (7.5 million years ago), and was probably the first mammal to enter this way during the Great Inter-American Exchange . When the Isthmus of Panama rose from the sea, which allowed the migration of other species, bears and other omnivorous species penetrated into South America, with which it could not compete, and disappeared after 5 million years of existence [1] .
Notes
- Mars The Marshall Illustrated Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals / Palmer, D. .. - London: Marshall Editions, 1999. - P. 215. - ISBN 1-84028-152-9 .
Literature
- Barry Cox, Colin Harrison, RJG Savage, and Brian Gardiner. (1999): The Whole Prehistoric Life. Simon & Schuster .
- David Norman. (2001): The Big Book Of Dinosaurs. page 13, Walcome books.