BIOESTRATIGRAFÍA BASADA EN MAMÍFEROS: CAMBIOS FAUNÍSTICOS E INFERENCIAS PALEOCLIMÁTICAS DURANTE EL CUATERNARIO EN LA REGIÓN PAMPEANA (ARGENTINA)

Abstract

BIOSTRATIGRAPHY BASED ON MAMMALS: FAUNAL CHANGES AND PALEOCLIMATIC INFLUENCES DURING THE QUATERNARY IN THE PAMPEAN REGION (ARGENTINA). Since the last decade of the 20th century, following the worldwide trend towards the development of chronological schemes with a biostratigraphic basis, contributions by Eduardo Pedro Tonni, Alberto Luis Cione, and collaborators began on this subject in Argentina. They proposed a almost continuous biostratigraphic sequence since the Late Miocene to the Holocene in the eastern pampean region of Argentina. Nowadays, it constitutes the chronological scale of the continental late Cenozoic of South America. The refinement of the Pampean biostratigraphic sequence made possible 1-to establish the chronology of the arrival of North American mammals immigrants to the southernmost South America during the Great American Biotic Exchange; 2-to improve the understanding of the faunal dynamics and the interpretation of the paleobiogeographic changes linked to the climatic fluctuations of the late Cenozoic; and 3-allowed establishing correlations between the type sections of the pampean region with other regions of the continent. The 30 years of scientific research by Tonni and Cione are unquestionable, in collaboration with other specialists, in reviewing the concept of “South American Land Mammal Ages” and to return to the chronostratigraphic-geochronological classification with a biostratigraphic basis. In this context, we updated and synthetized the biostratigraphic scheme, its mastofaunal composition, and the main climatic changes that occurred during the Quaternary in the pampean region, along with a brief synopsis of the career of E. P. Tonni and his contribution to paleontology of vertebrate.