In 1871, W.H. Flower stated, "Few districts of the world are so rich in well-preserved remains of an extinct fauna of remarkable and interesting character as the neighbourhood of the city of Buenos Ayres." Now it appears we have some clear understanding of the phylogenetic relation of some of these curious South American ungulates.
Macrauchenia and Toxodon, referred to by Darwin as possibly the strangest animals ever discovered, are shown from molecular evidence in ancient proteins preserved in fossilized bone to be mostly related to horses and hippos in a new Nature paper involving an extensive global collaborative effort. It is great to see new techniques answer old long-standing questions with many scientists coming together for the common cause.
Welker et al. (2015) Ancient proteins resolve the evolutionary history of Darwin’s South American ungulates, Nature, doi:10.1038/nature14249.
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