RAPID: Salvage Recovery of Miocene Fossil Primates and Other Vertebrates from Localities Threatened by Hydroelectric Dam Projects along the Rio Santa Cruz, Argentina

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The research to be conducted is the along the Río Santa Cruz in far southern Argentina (Santa Cruz Province). The project is critical and time sensitive because construction is beginning on two hydroelectric dams that will inundate the fossil localities to be studied. Dam site preparation and infrastructure improvement were begun along the river in 2012. Recovery of specimens from this region therefore salvages information that will otherwise soon be lost to science. Santa Cruz Province is world-famous for its Early Miocene vertebrate fossils, which range in age from about 19 to 15 million years ago, and for its unique capacity to document the evolution and adaptations of South American (SA) anthropoid primates, also called platyrrhines or New World monkeys, that make up a significant fraction of the modern biodiversity of tropical South America (17 genera and >130 species). The fossil sites occur in the Santa Cruz Formation and document the onset of a period of climate warming called the mid-Miocene Climate Optimum (MMCO), which accounts for their occurrence 20° of latitude south of their current distributional limits. The sites contain the most complete fossil platyrrhines from their first known appearance on the continent at about 26 Ma until the Holocene. The information that has been revealed by such complete fossils has given scientists unparalleled insights into early platyrrhine biology, ecology, and phylogeny. The scientific questions to be addressed are of broad paleoanthropological and paleontological significance, and include the core specific aims of 1) the illumination of ongoing debates about the antiquity of the living zoological families of New World monkeys and an understanding of the mammalian community structure and environments in which they lived; and 2) the analysis of the responses of vertebrates to the climatic changes of the MMCO. The conduct of the research will continue a longstanding collaboration between US and Argentinian scientists from disparate fields of primatology, stratigraphy, invertebrate and vertebrate paleontology, and geochemistry. It fosters the continued training of students and professionals including, especially, the field training of a US graduate student and several Argentinian students in paleoprimatology and vertebrate paleontology.