Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
South America's considerable cervid diversity belies their relatively recent arrival. The presence of camelids in South America but not North America today is ironic, given that they have a 45-million-year-long history in the latter continent (where they originated), and only a 3-million-year history in the former. Family: Tayassuidae (peccaries)
The fauna of South America consists of a huge variety of unique animals some of which evolved in relative isolation. The isolation of South America allowed for many separate animal lineages to evolve, creating a lot of originality when it comes to South American animal species. [ 1 ]
A South American tapir browsing leaves at Pouso Alegre, Transpantaneira, Poconé, Mato Grosso, Brazil. The South American tapir is an herbivore. Using its mobile nose, it feeds on leaves, buds, shoots, and small branches it tears from trees, fruit, grasses, and aquatic plants. They also feed on the vast majority of seeds found in the rainforest ...
South America had no placental predatory mammals until the Pleistocene, and xenarthran large-mammal faunas may have been vulnerable to many factors including a rise in numbers of mammalian predators, resource use by spreading North American herbivores with faster metabolisms and higher food requirements, and climate change.
Meridiungulata might have originated in South America from a North American condylarth ancestor, [3] and they may be members of the clade Laurasiatheria, related to other ungulates, including artiodactyls and perissodactyls. [4] It has, however, been suggested the Meridiungulata are part of a different macro-group of placental mammals called ...
Armadillos are small mammals with a bony armored shell. There are 21 extant species in the Americas, 19 of which are only found in South America, where they originated. Their much larger relatives, the pampatheres and glyptodonts, once lived in North and South America but became extinct following the appearance of humans.
These creatures look like porcupines because of their spikes. They are unique mammals known as monotremes, which means they lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. 92. South American ...
Around the middle of the Cenozoic, approximately 34 million years ago, [3] two types of mammals appeared for the first time in South America: rodents and primates. Both of these groups had already been inhabiting other continents for millions of years and they simply arrived in South America rather than originated there.