Aaron R. Wood

TouchTerrain is a simple-to-use web application that makes creating 3D printable terrain models from anywhere on the globe accessible to a wide range of users, from people with no GIS expertise to power users. For coders, a Python-based standalone version is available from the open-source project’s GitHub repository. Analyzing 18 months of web analytics gave us a preliminary look at who is using the TouchTerrain web application and what their models are used for; and to map out what terrains on the globe they chose to 3D print. From July 2019 to January 2021, more than 20,000 terrain models were downloaded. Models were created for many different use cases, including education, research, outdoor activities and crafting mementos. Most models were realized with 3D printers, but a sizable minority used CNC machines. Our own experiences with using 3D printed terrain in a university setting have been very positive so far. Anecdotal evidence points to the strong potential for 3D printed terrain models to provide significant help with specific map-related tasks. For the introductory geology laboratory, 3D printed models were used as a form of “training wheels” to aid beginning students in learning to read contour maps, which are still an important tool for geology.

Herein, we describe a new early Miocene dugongine from marine deposits of the Culebra Cut (Gaillard Cut) of the Panama Canal. The new taxon, Culebratherium alemani, gen. et sp. nov., represents one of the few records of late Aquitanian–early Burdigalian sirenians and the oldest sirenian from Central America. A phylogenetic analysis places Culebratherium in a clade with Dioplotherium cf. D. allisoni (Miocene of Brazil), Dioplotherium allisoni (Miocene of Baja California Sur, Mexico, and California, U.S.A.), and Dioplotherium sp. (Pliocene of Yucatan, Mexico). Similar to these taxa, Culebratherium is characterized by the presence of large incisor tusks, a premaxillary symphysis without a boss, a premaxilla-frontal suture forming a butt joint, and a moderately downturned rostrum. In addition, Culebratherium exhibits prominent occipital-cervical attachment sites for enlarged neck musculature. These features taken together are interpreted as adaptations for uprooting large, deeply buried seagrass rhizomes. Other dugongines with similar, yet convergent, dental and facial adaptations are known from earlier or coeval deposits in Puerto Rico, Florida, South Carolina, California, Baja California Sur, Brazil, and India and were constituents of sympatric paleocommunities of sirenians. Only fragmentary evidence of a second smaller and unidentifiable sirenian species is known from the Culebra Formation, but future discoveries may reveal a similar sympatric paleocommunity during the early Miocene of Panama. Finally, we used the results of the phylogenetic analysis to propose the new clade Pan-Sirenia as the most inclusive group consisting of stem and crown groups and redefine the Sirenia, Dugongidae, and Dugonginae clades.

We describe fossil kogiid periotics from the Lower Pliocene upper Bone Valley Formation in central Florida and the Lower to Upper Pliocene Yorktown Formation at Lee Creek Mine, North Carolina. The fossils show diagnostic characters that identify them as belonging to Kogiidae, such as three spines in the anterior process, presence of an incudal process, and a posterior process oriented along the long axis of the bone. Morphological comparisons and morphometric and statistical analyses of periotic proportions confirm the presence of a large and a small morphotype within the sample. The large morphotype (mean length = 39.76 mm) belongs to an unknown kogiid that occurs in both formations, whereas the small morphotype (mean length = 28.64 mm), referred to aff. Kogia sp., occurs only in the Yorktown Formation. The cooccurrence of two taxa in North Carolina may represent one of the earliest evidences of sympatry in kogiids and may demonstrate that this ecological behavior has been part of the natural history of this group at least since the deposition of the Yorktown Formation at Lee Creek (∼4.8–3.1 Ma). In addition, the occurrence of the large morphotype in the upper Bone Valley Formation, herein reported for the first time, shows that we are still far from understanding the diversity of marine mammals of that formation and that revision of newly acquired material is necessary. SUPPLEMENTAL DATA—Supplemental materials are available for this article for free at www.tandfonline.com/UJVP Citation for this article: Vélez-Juarbe, J., A. R. Wood, and C. Pimiento. 2016. Pygmy sperm whales (Odontoceti, Kogiidae) from the Pliocene of Florida and North Carolina. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2016.1135806.

SUPPLEMENTAL DATA—Supplemental materials are available for this article for free at www.tandfonline.com/UJVP