Willem is a wildlife artist based in South Africa. He says "My aim is simply to express the beauty and wonder that is in Nature, and to heighten people's appreciation of plants, animals and the wilderness. Not everything I paint is African! Though I've never been there, I'm also fascinated by Asia and I've done paintings of Asian rhinos and birds as well. I may in future do some of European, Australian and American species too. I'm fascinated by wild things from all over the world! I mainly paint in watercolours. . . but actually many media including 'digital' paintings with the computer!"

I rarely mention matters pertinent to contemporary human life in these articles, but now I'll make an exception. Today is the first day of a countrywide lockdown here in South Africa, similar to what is happening all over the world in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. So for three weeks I'm not going to be able to go out of my house except for getting food and absolutely necessary supplies. I am rather worried but I hope I'll be fine. More importantly, I want to urge all readers to comply with the measures instituted to contain this virus, to slow or halt its spread, so we can get back to a semblance of normal life – even if life afterwards is not going to be quite the same as it was before. Most of all, let us help and support and encourage each other – at a safe distance – through this!

Now again for an old-timer that, sadly, is with us no more. Macrauchenia patachonica, the 'Great Patagonian Llama', almost made it, going extinct as recently as 10 000 years ago, which in geological terms is the blink of an eye. This is one more of the host of unique South American mammals that evolved during that continent's phase of being an island disconnected from North America and the other continents (except for, at some times, Antarctica). But Macrauchenia also survived well after the point where contact was re-established. This means it was very well-equipped to deal with what we consider the more 'modern' mammals that crossed over from North into South America and competed with its natives, to the detriment of most.

Now, despite its name, Macrauchenia was not a llama, or a camel. It was a member of an extinct order of ungulate (hoofed) mammals, the Litopterna, which now appears to be most closely related to the order of horses, rhinos and tapirs, the Perissodactyla. The lineage of the litopterns split from that of the perissodactyls about 66 million years ago, that is to say, at about the time that the non-bird dinosaurs died out. Back then, all mammals were still very small, and the horse/litoptern ancestor at that point might have looked like a rabbit or large, long-legged rat. The litopterns, entirely restricted to South America, diversified greatly, and I hope to feature more of them here soon.

The man who discovered the bones of this ancient weirdoid was no-one other than Charles Darwin himself. This was during the epic voyage of The Beagle, on which Darwin sailed along as the appointed naturalist (and as a companion to the captain, smart enough to supply him with stimulating conversation). The living and extinct things he encountered on this journey provided him with the information and inspiration for coming up with his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. In 1834 he collected Macrauchenia's bones at Port St. Julian, Patagonia. The size and robustness of the bones made him think they belonged to a Mastodon or some such elephant-like thing, but back in Britain, palaeontologist and anatomist Richard Owen saw they were something different, and gave the species its scientific name. Since then more fossils have turned up, from practically all over South America.

Reconstructing Macrauchenia is a challenge. Its body is all right, not that different from that of many other ungulates. It was large, with an overall length of about 3m/10', carrying its head more than 2m/7' above the ground. Its body was heavy, its weight perhaps a ton or more; its legs were long and sturdy. It had three hoofed toes on each foot, the central toe being the largest and carrying most of its weight. Its skull is really strange. It is long and rather narrow, with a full complement of teeth, but the funny thing is that it has its nasal opening right at the top of the skull, above and between the eyes, rather than on the front of the skull, as is the case with almost all mammals except whales. Now some modern browsing mammals have high nostril openings, such as Tapirs and Dik-diks, but Macrauchenia's skull differs from these in many ways. It doesn't feature an 'obvious' large, nasal cavity that could be filled in with muscle and tissue. So, while many paleo-artists reconstruct it as having a long, trunk-like proboscis, I consider that unlikely. There just doesn't seem much bone support on the skull for a feature like that. Instead, I think it might have had large fleshy lips and a snout with perhaps an inflatable 'sac' at the top, that might have been used for display. Its outer nostrils were probably not right at the top of its skull but somewhat in between the tip of the snout and the opening of the nasal cavity. Closing the nostrils while exhaling air from the lungs would have inflated this sac. But again, this is just my own reconstruction. The real thing might have been much different, not to mention weirder.

We can be sure that Macrauchenia was an herbivore. Its long limbs and neck gave it a high reach, perfect from browsing the leaves of trees, while analysis of its teeth suggest that it grazed as well. In its heyday, from 7 million to 10 000 years or so ago, it ranged all over the continent, from Patagonia in the very far south to Venezuela in the north, in habitats ranging from dry to moist, from sparse grassland to luxuriant forest. Bones found in association with each other suggest that it formed small herds or family groups.

When Macrauchenia first evolved, with South America still isolated, it would have been preyed upon by the native mammalian Sparassodonts, another unique group I'll feature here shortly, as well as by the great Phorusrhacids or Terror Birds. Once the continent was connected with North America, some new and fearful predators entered: wolves, sabre-tooths and other large, predatory cats, and bears, which included the enormous short-faced bears, some of the largest mammalian land predators known. It is amazing that Macrauchenia was able to flourish even in the 'teeth' of these huge new predators. Its size gave it some safeguard, except against the larger bears, which it might have been able to escape with its running speed and manoeuvrability. But these predators would indeed have put stress on its lifestyle, as also would have the new, competing herbivores that entered – elephants, horses, deer, camels, llamas, tapirs and peccaries. However, the latest arrival of all was one it had no defense against – humans. Its extinction date, shortly after the first humans entered South America, makes it likely that, at the very least, humanity was a factor in its demise, perhaps by being the final straw that broke this not-quite-camel's back.

Willem

06.04.20 Front Page

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