The life history of European Middle Pleistocene equids : first insights from bone histology
Nacarino-Meneses, Carmen (Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)
Orlandi Oliveras, Guillem 1992- (Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont)

Date:	2021
Abstract:	Evolutionary trends in body size are a central issue of study in Palaeontology. However, and despite body size being one of the most important life history traits of an animal, iconic size-decrease trends such as the one experienced by Equus during the European Pleistocene have never been analysed under a life history framework. Here, we studied the metapodial bone histology of two large Middle Pleistocene species (Equus mosbachensis and Equus steinheimensis) to reconstruct key life history traits that correlate with body size (e. g. size at birth, growth rate), and compare them with that of smaller extant Equus (Equus grevyi, Equus quagga, Equus zebra and Equus hemionus). Our results show that neonatal size of these Middle Pleistocene equids fits predictions from body mass scaling. We estimate a similar age of epiphyseal fusion for the metapodia of E. mosbachensis and E. steinheimensis and that of extant equids. Our findings also reveal that extinct equids grew at higher rates than extant Equus. This result conforms to the predictions of life history theory on environments with different levels of resource availability and provides a new framework of study for body size shifts on European Pleistocene equids.
Grants:	Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CGL-2015-63777 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia BES-2013-066335 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia EEBB-I-16-10546 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2014/SGR-1207
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió acceptada per publicar
Subject:	Bone histology ; Body size ; Life history ; Growth rate ; Pleistocene ; Equus
Published in:	Historical biology, Vol. 33, Issue 5 (2021) , p. 672-682, ISSN 1029-2381

DOI: 10.1080/08912963.2019.1655011

Postprint 35 p, 1.3 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles