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New Specimens of the Late Cretaceous Metatherian Eodelphis and the Evolution of Hard-Object Feeding in the Stagodontidae

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Abstract

The Stagodontidae include the largest metatherians known from the Cretaceous of North America. Of the recognized species of the stagodontid genus Eodelphis, E. cutleri is larger and has a more robust dentary, more inflated premolars, and third premolars specialized for crushing, as opposed to the more gracile E. browni. These differences have led to the hypothesis that an E. cutleri-like ancestor gave rise to Didelphodon—another, mostly younger, stagodontid, which has been interpreted as a durophagous predator-scavenger. If correct, E. cutleri would be expected to show more morphological adaptation toward durophagy than E. browni does. Here, we describe two new dentary fossils referable to E. browni and test the evolutionary hypothesis by applying beam theory to estimate bending force capabilities of 22 dentaries of Cretaceous stagodontids and other metatherians. The resulting diversity of bending force profiles of the sampled dentaries implies that Cretaceous metatherians had a wide range of feeding behaviors. Among the stagodontids, E. cutleri has a mediolateral bending force profile of the dentary that is more similar to that of Didelphodon than it is to that of E. browni; whereas its dorsoventral bending force profile is more similar to that of E. browni. These results indicate that anteriorly the dentary of E. cutleri was capable of resisting high torsional stresses from hard-object feeding but lacked other dorsoventral buttressing associated with exceptionally high bite forces of Didelphodon. Our results imply that some morphological changes associated with durophagy evolved twice within this clade, independently in E. cutleri and Didelphodon.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Museum of the Rockies (MOR), especially Dr. John Scannella, the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP), especially Drs. Patricia Holroyd and William A. Clemens, and the Two Medicine Dinosaur Center Museum, especially Stacia Martineau and Cory Coverdell for access to specimens. We thank Dr. Sharlene Santana for access and use of the Santana Lab micro CT scanner, and Brody Hovatter for completing scans of these specimens. Funding for this research was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF EAR SGP 1325674). We are grateful to members of the Wilson Lab (Dr. Stephanie Smith, Dr. Jonathan Calede, Dr. David DeMar, Jr., Lucas Weaver, and Brody Hovatter) for helpful comments and discussion concerning this manuscript. We also express our gratitude to Dr. David M. Grossnickle and one anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, DC, 98195-1800, USA

    Alexandria L. Brannick & Gregory P. Wilson

  2. Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Seattle, Washington, DC, 98195-1800, USA

    Gregory P. Wilson

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  1. Alexandria L. Brannick
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Correspondence to Alexandria L. Brannick.

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Brannick, A.L., Wilson, G.P. New Specimens of the Late Cretaceous Metatherian Eodelphis and the Evolution of Hard-Object Feeding in the Stagodontidae. J Mammal Evol 27, 1–16 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-018-9451-z

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