''Charruatoxodon'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

notoungulate Notoungulata is an extinct order of mammalian ungulates that inhabited South America from the early Paleocene to the Holocene, living from approximately 61 million to 11,000 years ago. Notoungulates were morphologically diverse, with forms resemb ...

belonging to the family

Toxodontidae Toxodontidae is an extinct family of notoungulate mammals, known from the Oligocene to the Holocene (11,000 BP) of South America, with one genus, ''Mixotoxodon'', also known from the Pleistocene of Central America and southwestern North America ...

. It lived from the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Early Pleistocene The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, being the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently estimated to span the time ...

in what is now southern

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

. Its remains have been found in the San José member of the Raigón Formation, near

Montevideo Montevideo () is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Uruguay, largest city of Uruguay. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 1,319,108 (about one-third of the country's total population) in an area of . M ...

History

The holotype of the genus, FC-DPV-514, was described in 1842 by

Alcide d'Orbigny Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (6 September 1802 – 30 June 1857) was a French naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including zoology (including malacology), palaeontology, geology, archaeology and anthrop ...

and

Charles Léopold Laurillard Charles Léopold Laurillard (21 January 1783 – 1853) was a French zoologist and paleontologist. His father died when he was 13, but he was able continue his studies. In 1803 he moved to Paris, and the following year he met Frédéric Cuvie ...

, who assigned it to the species '' Dinotoxodon paranensis''. They believed the specimen to come from the

Upper Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million years ago) to 5.333 Ma. The ev ...

Camacho Formation. The assignation to the species ''D. paranensis'' was contested by Pérez-García in 2004, who only assigned it to the genus ''Dinotoxodon''. In 2013, a study by Perea, Rinderknecht, Ubilla, Bostelmann and Martinez assigned it as Toxodontidae indet., and estimated its remains to be more recent than initially thought, likely the result of the fall of a overlying block containing the remains inside an earlier deposit, and assigned it to the

Montehermosan The Montehermosan age is a period of geologic time (6.8–4.0 Ma) within the Miocene and Pliocene epochs of the Neogene used more specifically with South American Land Mammal Ages. It follows the Huayquerian and precedes the Chapadmalalan The C ...

Ensenadan The Ensenadan age is a period of geologic time (1.2–0.8 Ma) within the Early Pleistocene epoch of the Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the ...

Raigón Formation. In 2022, a revision of the specimen led by Ferrero, Schmidt, Pérez-García, Perea and Ribeiro finally erected the new genus and species ''Charruatoxodon uruguayensis'', using FC-DPV-514 as

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

Etymology

The genus name, ''Charruatoxodon'', is composed from the suffix -''toxodon'', referring to its relative ''

Toxodon ''Toxodon'' (meaning "bow tooth" in reference to the curvature of the teeth) is an extinct genus of South American mammals from the Late Miocene to early Holocene epochs (Mayoan to Lujanian in the SALMA classification) (about 11.6 million to 11 ...

'', and the prefix ''Charrua''-, referring to the

Charrúa The Charrúa were an indigenous people or Indigenous Nation of the Southern Cone in present-day Uruguay and the adjacent areas in Argentina ( Entre Ríos) and Brazil ( Rio Grande do Sul). They were a semi-nomadic people who sustained themselve ...

natives, who lived in southern Uruguay before the

Spanish colonization The Spanish Empire ( es, link=no, Imperio español), also known as the Hispanic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Hispánica) or the Catholic Monarchy ( es, link=no, Monarquía Católica) was a colonial empire governed by Spain and its prede ...

and suffered a violent genocide organized by the newly formed Uruguayan government in 1831. The species name, ''urugayensis'', is given after the country were its holotype was found,

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q111271162 Toxodonts Pleistocene mammals of South America Pliocene mammals of South America Miocene mammals of South America Pleistocene genus extinctions Neogene Uruguay Pleistocene Uruguay Fossils of Uruguay Ensenadan Uquian Chapadmalalan Montehermosan Fossil taxa described in 2022 Prehistoric placental genera