What Animals Did Charles Darwin Find In The Andes Mountains
On July 1, 160 years ago (1858) Darwin and Wallace presented their theory on the evolution of species by the action of natural choice at the Linnean Lodge of London. Since and so, many of the animals and plants they discovered and analyzed on their voyages and in their writings have been the object of numerous studies that have antiseptic their evolutionary significance.
But some animals discovered or analyzed past Darwin and Wallace take refused to reveal their nature, even though they played an important role in the construction of their theory. Amid them are two: the Macrauchenia , a strange, extinct behemothic mammal from South America found by Darwin; and the Babirusa , an unusual sus scrofa (endemic to some islands in the Malaysian archipelago) analyzed past Wallace. The Macrauchenia is one of the most "chimerical" animals always; while the Babirusa is an beast with an extremely strange anatomical feature. The application of a number of genetic and molecular techniques is now at last clarifying their nature.
Darwin's extinct monsters
In 1834 Darwin discovered the fossilized bones of a foreign giant mammal in Argentina and Uruguay during his voyage in the Beagle. This discovery, as well as that of other fossils of large South American mammals such every bit glyptodonts, Megatheria and mylodons (related to the sloths or armadillos currently alive in these regions), helped him begin to think for the first time of the theory of evolution by natural pick, given that they demonstrated that species can vary over fourth dimension and even become extinct.
At Darwin'southward urging, Richard Owen, the most important zoologist of the fourth dimension, christened this foreign fossil as Macrauchenia , above all considering he thought that its long neck and the form of its trunk meant information technology was a large Camelid related to the South American llamas.
In fact, Macrauchenia means "long-necked", with auchenia referring to the genus in which all the South American camelids (llamas, vicuñas, guanacos, alpacas, etc.) were included at the fourth dimension. But later, since they besides had features of other animals, like the long neck of a giraffe, and a skull and strange body similar to an elephant, their taxonomical position has been much debated.
Contempo molecular studies of these animals have begun to resolve the enigma. In 2015, based on the fossilized basic of these animals that are more than than x,000 years old, an almost complete sequence has been obtained of the protein collagen, the primary protein in the skin and basic of mammals (1); and in 2017, the well-nigh complete mitochondrial Deoxyribonucleic acid (ii) sequence. Comparing these sequences with those of the rest of the ungulates (the group of mammals with hoofs to which they vest) proves that these mammals have a common ancestry with horses, hippopotami and tapirs, but are non related to camelids, elephants or armadillos and sloths. In addition, the molecular information show that the ancestors of species and groups such as Macrauchenia originated more than 60 million years agone, possibly in the American department of the great land mass of Gondwana, and that later on, when the South American continent separated, evolved and proliferated there independently until some 10,000 years ago, when they became extinct – or maybe were made extinct by humans?
In the end, its strange mixture of morphological characteristics could be explained past convergent evolutionary processes, which are parallel with but contained of other mammals such every bit elephants, giraffes, camelids, etc., with which they share some of their features.
Wallace's fantastic squealer
In his trips effectually the Malaysian Archipelago, which began in 1854 and lasted 8 years, when he reached the Celebes-Sulawesi Islands (currently part of Indonesia), Wallace mentioned a strange owned species of hog: the babirusa. According to him, it was a species that evolved from the pigs that arrived from the Asian continent to these islands at a fourth dimension when the body of water level had fallen (due to phenomena such as glaciations, telluric movements, etc.). Just when the body of water level later rose, the ancestors of the babirusa may have become isolated on the Celebes, thus evolving in a unlike way from the ancestral species of pigs from which they came.
Since so the babirusa has been an enigma in various ways. It is a strange wild grunter for a number of reasons, not simply because of its advent, which is different from other pigs from snout to trotters. In fact, in some cases it has been linked more to the hippopotamus than to pigs.
In particular, what is characteristic and practically unique in this beast is that instead of growing down as is normal, its upper canines abound upward and backward, and even affect its snout and sometimes perforate it. Given that there are deer on the Celebes islands that take developed tusks exterior the snout (simply never backward and never to such an extent), the natives gave them the name babirusa, or "pig-deer".
Little progress has been fabricated on the origin and evolutionary meaning of these foreign tusks since Wallace's time, although some folk explanations have survived: one native legend has information technology that the animals used them to hang from the trees while they slept and thus escape their predators. At any charge per unit, if they practice serve whatever purpose, information technology is possibly as protection for the snout when they fight, or even as an indicator of sexual prowess and the wellness status of the males.
In dissimilarity, numerous genetic and molecular studies are now examining Wallace's hypothesis on the origin of this species in depth. The sequencing of diverse genes and nuclear and mitochondrial proteins and even the consummate genomes of the babirusa and other Suidae (a group that also includes a number of Asian/European species of pigs, wild boars, and other African species such as warthogs, giant wood hogs, red river hogs, etc.) have demonstrated that this is the most differentiated of the Suidae: its ancestors separated earliest from the residual of its group in evolutionary terms – in fact, even before the divergence between the Eurasian and African species (3).
At the same fourth dimension, these studies provide us with data that explicate other biological characteristics that differentiate the babirusa from other pigs, such as its low reproductive charge per unit or the different way its digestive, reproductive or cardiac systems are structured and operate. But that's another story, in which it's also worth including two other points: that the babirusas are depicted in cave paintings on the Celebes Islands dating back to near forty,000 years ago (iv); and that thanks to modern techniques of reproduction and beast care it has been possible recently to reproduce a babirusa in a zoo (San Diego, United states), which opens upwards interesting possibilities in the fight to foreclose its extinction.
Manuel Ruíz Rejón
Bibliography
- Welker, F. 2015. Aboriginal proteins resolve the evolutionary history of Darwin's Southward American ungulates. Nature .Jun 4, 522 (7554):81-84.
- Westburg M. et al. 2017. A mitogenomic fourth dimension tree for Darwin enigmatic Due south American mammal Macrauchenia patachonica. Nature Commun. Jun 27, 8: 15951.
- Frantz, L. et al. 2016, The evolution of Suidae. Rev. Anim. Biosci. 4: 61-85.
- Aubert,One thousand. et al. 2014. Pleistocene cave art from Sulawesi, Republic of indonesia. Nature, October. nine, 514 (7521): 223-227.
Source: https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/bioscience/darwin-fantastic-animals-and-where-to-find-them/
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