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9 A Short History of the Study of Venezuelan Vertebrate Fossils Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra Paleontological and stratigraphical studies of South America have a long history, dating back to the prominent contributions of D’Orbigny (1835) and Darwin (1846). Detailed studies of this kind in Venezuela started later and with less known works, although early mentions of fossils are known. The most prominent explorer in Venezuela was undoubtedly Alexander von Humboldt, who visited the Andes of Trujillo and Mérida, the Serranía del Interior of eastern Venezuela including the Cueva del Guácharo, and the Orinoco River, reaching the Casiquiare region in the south. Humboldt reportedly found Pleistocene megafauna (e.g., mastodonts ) during his trip, in particular from an area near Cumanacoa, Estado Sucre (cf. Carillo-Briceño, Alfonzo, and Chávez 2008). The German naturalist Hermann Karsten (1817–1908) noted in several publications (1851, 1862) the presence of Megatherium or related taxa at different localities in western and eastern Venezuela. He also mentioned for two localities in central Venezuela the presence of footprints of “Chirotherium,” an unconfirmed report of an ichnotaxon of uncertain significance (Odreman and Medina 1984). Adolf Ernst (1874) reported the presence of numerous extinct Pleistocene mammals remains of large size. Ernst (1832–99) was born in what is currently Pryemków, Poland, and arrived in Venezuela in 1861. For the rest of his life Ernst studied different aspects of natural history in that country. He was one of the founding members of the Museo Nacional and founder of the Sociedad de Ciencias Físicas y Naturales of Venezuela. José María Vargas (1786–1854), who became rector of the Universidad Central de Venezuela and president of the country, started the first collection of fossil vertebrates in Venezuela, according to Von der Osten (1947). This collection was deposited in the Museo de Ciencias Naturales de Caracas, the same collection in which A. Ernst deposited fossils in 1874 (ibid.). Single and brief reports of Pleistocene vertebrates from several areas, including Zulia State, were presented in the geological synthesis of Venezuela by Liddle (1928). In the 1930s a few descriptions of Venezuelan fossil vertebrates were published. Collins (1934) described the megatherid Prepotherium venezuelanum from the Río Tucupido, near Guanare, Portuguesa state (see 2 Sánchez-Villagra 10 Sánchez-Villagra et al. this volume for a discussion of the stratigraphic provenance and age of this fossil). Schaub (1935) noted the presence of the toxodont genus Nesodon in Miocene sediments near San Pedro, Falcón state. He also described a new species of Megatherium, M. rusconii, from Pleistocene rocks of the Barquisimeto area, a species which, if valid, is most likely part of the genus Eremotherium. The priest Nectario Maria (1937, 1941, 1944) from the Colegio La Salle in Barquisimeto conducted the first paleontological investigation initiated in Venezuela, resulting in reports on Quaternary localities in the Barquisimeto area, Lara state. The well-known North American paleontologist G. G. Simpson had a short but productive research activity in Venezuela. In 1938 and 1939, Simpson went to Venezuela on a fossil-collecting expedition at the invitation of the government of Venezuela (Simpson 1939). One of his trips took place soon after his marriage to Anne Roe (1904–91), who accompanied him. Some of the various mammals collected by Simpson are in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History (Laporte 2000). As a result of his expeditions to Venezuela, Simpson described a new turtle species “Podocnemis” geologorum (Simpson 1943) (Sánchez-Villagra and Scheyer this volume) and a new glyptodont, Asterostemma venezolensis (Simpson 1947), recently included in the new genus Boreostemma by Carlini et al. (2008). These two are still the most significant vertebrate finds from eastern Venezuela and were collected from sites that no longer exist. Simpson worked jointly with Nectario María in the area of Barquisimeto for several months. The toxodont materials found by Simpson in his expedition, in the area of San Miguel near Barquisimeto, were described by R. Van Frank (1957) from the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Harvard as the new species Mixotoxodon larensis (Bond and Gelfo, this volume). The paper was intended to be part of a series of two, but a second paper describing other large mammals was never published. Some of the fossil localities studied by Simpson were in an area occupied by native Americans known as “Kamarakotos,” and he wrote a highly praised monograph on this tribe, including topics such as linguistics and artifacts (Simpson 1940). José Royo...

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