''Cuvieronius'' is an extinct

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...

genus of

gomphothere Gomphotheres are any members of the diverse, extinct taxonomic family Gomphotheriidae. Gomphotheres were elephant-like proboscideans, but do not belong to the family Elephantidae. They were widespread across Afro-Eurasia and North America dur ...

, named after the French naturalist

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in na ...

. Alive, specimens typically stood about tall at the shoulder, weighed about and would have superficially resembled a modern

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantida ...

with spiral-shaped tusks.

Taxonomy

The species now known as ''Cuvieronius hyodon'' was among the first

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

animals from the New World to be studied. The first remains of this species were recovered from Ecuador by

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 17696 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister ...

, at a location the local population referred to as the "Field of Giants".Mayor, A. (2005). Fossil legends of the first Americans. Princeton University Press. Humboldt recognized that, rather than being bones of giant humans as had been thought by the local population and previous Spanish colonists, they were similar to the giant elephants (''

Mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the ...

'') being described from

Ohio Ohio () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Of the List of states and territories of the United States, fifty U.S. states, it is the List of U.S. states and territories by area, 34th-l ...

. Humboldt sent teeth that he had collected from Mexico, Ecuador, and Chile to French anatomist

, who classified the teeth into two species, which he referred to as the "mastodonte des cordilières" and the "mastodonte humboldtien", in an 1806 paper.Lucas, S.G. (2009)
Case 3479 ''Cuvieronius'' Osborn, 1923 (Mammalia, Proboscidea): Proposed conservation.
Bull. Zool. Nomen, 66, 1-6. It was not until 1824 that Cuvier formally named the species. He referred both to the genus ''

'', calling them ''M. andium'' and ''M. humboldtii''. Unknown to Cuvier, Fischer had, in 1814, already named the two species based on Cuvier's original description, in the new genus ''Mastotherium'' as ''M. hyodon'' and ''M. humboldtii''. The idea of two distinct species continued to be accepted into the 20th century, usually using Cuvier's names, though Fischer's names were older. In 1923,

Henry Fairfield Osborn Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. (August 8, 1857 – November 6, 1935) was an American paleontologist, geologist and eugenics advocate. He was the president of the American Museum of Natural History for 25 years and a cofounder of the American Euge ...

recognized that these species were distinct from ''Mastodon'', and assigned each to its own new genus, as ''Cuvieronius humboldtii'' and ''Cordillerion andium''. However, by the 1930s, general agreement had shifted to regard both forms as representing a single, geographically widespread species, with ''Cuvieronius humboldtii'' considered to be the correct name. During the 1950s, the nomenclature of this species became increasingly tangled, as various scientists regarded the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specim ...

of the genus ''Cuvieronius'' to be Fischer's first published name ''Mastotherium hyodon'', rather than the originally designated ''Mastodon humboldtii''. This situation went unaddressed until 2009, when Spencer Lucas petitioned the

International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is an organization dedicated to "achieving stability and sense in the scientific naming of animals". Founded in 1895, it currently comprises 26 commissioners from 20 countries. Orga ...

to officially change the type species of ''Cuvieronius'' to ''M. hyodon'' as had been followed for over 50 years by that time, rather than abandoning the well-known ''Cuvieronius'' as a synonym. In 2011, Opinion 2276 of the ICZN ruled to conserve the names.

Evolution

''Cuvieronius'' initially evolved in North America during the Late

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58

Taxonomy

Evolution

Distribution and habitat

References

Bibliography

External links