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- Photo of the Day #49: Syndyoceras cooki
By laelaps on November 26, 2007.
Admittedly, I am often somewhat fixated upon fossil predators, but herbivores can be just as varied and interesting as anything that fed upon them. Syndyoceras cooki, a protoceratid artiodactyl of Miocene age, is one such animal, and the two horns protruding from the front of its snout would be fused to create the characteristic "slingshot" in some later forms of this group.
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paleontology
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What a fascinating bunch the protoceratids are. I wonder why they ended up evolving those odd nose horns along with the uppper ones? Kind of hard to visualize exactly how the males might have fought with them . . .
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I remember how older books labeled the protoceratids as ancient relatives of the pronghorn, even though it does seem that their closest cousins among the artiodactyls are the camels.
Funny that so many different lineages of artiodactyls* should evolve bony headgear like horns, ossicones and antlers, which are quite unique among extant mammals, especially when you consider that most other large herbivores use either modified canine teeth (e.g. pigs) or keratinous growths (e.g. rhinos) in intraspecific combat/anti-predator defense. Off the top of my head, the only other large herbivorous non-artiodactyls that evolved bony horns are the brontotheres, embrithopods (e.g. Arsinotherium) and dinoceratans (e.g. Uintatherium).
*Let's see now... protoceratids, antilocaprids, palaeomerycids and cervids, giraffids and climacoceratids, bovids... it is possible that horns might have already been present in the common ancestors of some of these lineages, but it is still amazing to see the stunning diversity of horn/antler morphology throughout the history of the artiodactyls.
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Thanks for the comments! I should be receiving a copy of The Evolution of the Artiodactyls soon, so perhaps it will address some of these issues.
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I tend to see a pattern of herbivore mammalian evolution regarding teeth & headgear:
rainforest: claws & jaws for defense, browsing lignin-rich twigs, tannin-rich leaves, sugar/pulp rich fruits/nectar
open land: hooves & headgear for defense, grazing silica-rich blades
Ecological mechanism for pushing herbivores away from water rich areas: waterside adapted carnivores poorly adapted for plains life, including large sabercats, crocs.
Result: (1) agile arboreal herbivores/frugivores, open water avoidance except in forest bais, more intra-specific vocal & visual (body hair/skin) competition. (2) endurant walking quick-sprinting terrestrial herbivores with better water/salt conservation metabolisms with seasonal migratory habits, open water caution except en masse, more intra-specific physical & visual (headgear) competition. (3) endurant walking terrestrial herbivores with extremely modified water/salt conservation metabolisms, no open water caution, less inter-specific competition & visual (headgear) competition.
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Gotta love those horn-headed artiodactyls. They are truly the ceratopsians of the mammalian world!
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I think "Y-bucks" (as my brother used to call them because of the Y-shaped horn) like *Syndioceras* and *Synthetoceras* are utterly fascinating. When I was four or five years old, I saw a picture of a nimravid chasing one in a book. Strangely, I was afraid of the supposedly harmless herbivore, not of the nimravid. I had nightmares in wich a oversized protoceratid destroyed my home town, defying all attempts of the authorities to stop it, except the last one, when a lucky pilot flying a Blackburn Skua (of all things!) landed a hit with a bomb. I have no idea why I knew about an obscure plane from the late thirties at five, I am not Norwegian and certainly did not knew about the sinking of the Königsberg at this early age.
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