A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines
The wolverine (Gulo gulo) is the largest living terrestrial member of the Mustelidae; a versatile predator formerly distributed throughout boreal regions of North America and Eurasia. Though commonly recovered from Pleistocene sites across their range, pre-Pleistocene records of the genus are exceed...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5910791 2023-05-15T16:32:20+02:00 A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines Samuels, Joshua X. Bredehoeft, Keila E. Wallace, Steven C. 2018-04-18 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5910791/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29682423 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4648 en eng PeerJ Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5910791/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29682423 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4648 ©2018 Samuels et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. CC-BY Evolutionary Studies Text 2018 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4648 2018-04-29T00:17:23Z The wolverine (Gulo gulo) is the largest living terrestrial member of the Mustelidae; a versatile predator formerly distributed throughout boreal regions of North America and Eurasia. Though commonly recovered from Pleistocene sites across their range, pre-Pleistocene records of the genus are exceedingly rare. Here, we describe a new species of Gulo from the Gray Fossil Site in Tennessee. Based on biostratigraphy, a revised estimate of the age of the Gray Fossil Site is Early Pliocene, near the Hemphillian—Blancan transition, between 4.9 and 4.5 Ma. This represents the earliest known occurrence of a wolverine, more than one million years earlier than any other record. The new species of wolverine described here shares similarities with previously described species of Gulo, and with early fishers (Pekania). As the earliest records of both Gulo and Pekania are known from North America, this suggests the genus may have evolved in North America and dispersed to Eurasia later in the Pliocene. Both fauna and flora at the Gray Fossil Site are characteristic of warm/humid climates, which suggests wolverines may have become ‘cold-adapted’ relatively recently. Finally, detailed comparison indicates Plesiogulo, which has often been suggested to be ancestral to Gulo, is not likely closely related to gulonines, and instead may represent convergence on a similar niche. Text Gulo gulo PubMed Central (PMC) PeerJ 6 e4648 |
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Evolutionary Studies |
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Evolutionary Studies Samuels, Joshua X. Bredehoeft, Keila E. Wallace, Steven C. A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
topic_facet |
Evolutionary Studies |
description |
The wolverine (Gulo gulo) is the largest living terrestrial member of the Mustelidae; a versatile predator formerly distributed throughout boreal regions of North America and Eurasia. Though commonly recovered from Pleistocene sites across their range, pre-Pleistocene records of the genus are exceedingly rare. Here, we describe a new species of Gulo from the Gray Fossil Site in Tennessee. Based on biostratigraphy, a revised estimate of the age of the Gray Fossil Site is Early Pliocene, near the Hemphillian—Blancan transition, between 4.9 and 4.5 Ma. This represents the earliest known occurrence of a wolverine, more than one million years earlier than any other record. The new species of wolverine described here shares similarities with previously described species of Gulo, and with early fishers (Pekania). As the earliest records of both Gulo and Pekania are known from North America, this suggests the genus may have evolved in North America and dispersed to Eurasia later in the Pliocene. Both fauna and flora at the Gray Fossil Site are characteristic of warm/humid climates, which suggests wolverines may have become ‘cold-adapted’ relatively recently. Finally, detailed comparison indicates Plesiogulo, which has often been suggested to be ancestral to Gulo, is not likely closely related to gulonines, and instead may represent convergence on a similar niche. |
format |
Text |
author |
Samuels, Joshua X. Bredehoeft, Keila E. Wallace, Steven C. |
author_facet |
Samuels, Joshua X. Bredehoeft, Keila E. Wallace, Steven C. |
author_sort |
Samuels, Joshua X. |
title |
A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
title_short |
A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
title_full |
A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
title_fullStr |
A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
title_full_unstemmed |
A new species of Gulo from the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site (Eastern United States); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
title_sort |
new species of gulo from the early pliocene gray fossil site (eastern united states); rethinking the evolution of wolverines |
publisher |
PeerJ Inc. |
publishDate |
2018 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5910791/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29682423 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4648 |
genre |
Gulo gulo |
genre_facet |
Gulo gulo |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5910791/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29682423 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4648 |
op_rights |
©2018 Samuels et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4648 |
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e4648 |
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