Before the elephants there were the mammoths and the other so -called “mastodons”: now extinct members of the proboscid order, which includes the family of the current pachyderms and a series of other families now extinct. Widespread a bit all over the world, their presence was particularly important in South America: since they disappeared, Many plants suffer from their absence. The link between Mastodonti and vegetation is explained in a study published on Nature Ecology & Evolution.
The diet of the mastodos. The study of the University of O’higgins, in Chile, focused in particular on a kind of mastodon: Memastodon Platennsislived in the Pleistocene (2.5 million years ago) throughout South America; The fossils used for the study all come from Chile, and half of these from the basin of Lago Tagua, an area particularly rich in Pleistocene remains.
The study analyzed in detail what was the diet of the Mastodonti of Chile, using the dental wear of the fossils found as a reference and crossing the data with what we know about the fossil plants of Chile. Perhaps it was foreseeable, but the study undoubtedly confirmed that The Chilean mastodos regularly ate the fruit produced by the trees in the area.
No mastodon, no reproduction. It may seem obvious, but in reality the discovery is fundamental because it confirms an old hypothesis of decades about the evolution of certain Tropical plants, which produce large and very sweet fruits to attract herbivores. Including the Mastodonti, in fact, which consumed large quantities of these fruits. In this way, they contributed to their diffusion, By dispersing their seeds after having them, let’s say so, “expelled”.
The consequences today. The problem, says the study, is that when the mastodos have extinguished, nobody took their place as seed dispersers: in Chile, 40% of the evolved plants in parallel with the Mastodonti is now at risk of extinctionand many species survive only in a few fragmented and low genetic diversity. Without the mastodos to help them spread, in short, these remained closed in a dead end from which they risk never going out: it is incredible to think how an interaction interrupted hundreds of thousands of years ago has consequences still today.
