SYSTEMATICS OF THE LONG-NOSED FLORIDATRAGULINE CAMELS (ARTIODACTYLA: CAMELIDAE)

The weird-looking tubular-snouted camels known as floridatragulines have been a controversial group ever since the first specimens were found in the 1930s. We describe only the second known skull of Floridatragulus dolicanthereus, which gives us a better understanding of the cranial anatomy and proof of association of the jaws and skull, because the holotype skull was badly crushed and mostly restored in plaster. Floridatragulus is not an isolated genus, but part of the subfamily Floridatragulinae, which have a fossil record going back to the late Eocene. The late Eocene “Poebrotherium” franki from Trans-Pecos Texas represents the oldest known floridatraguline. No floridatraguline fossils are known from the Oligocene, possibly due to the scarcity of terrestrial fossils in the Gulf Coast Plain at that time. The earliest Miocene (latest Arikareean) Aguascalientia was a slightly larger, more derived taxon, known from four species from Mexico, Texas, and Panama. Finally, we recognize three valid species of the genus Floridatragulus from the early Miocene (early Hemingfordian-Barstovian) of Florida and Texas. Floridatragulines were an early and primitive branch of camelids, more derived than poebrotherines and miotylopines-stenomylines, but more primitive than the miolabines and protolabines. They were mostly found in the warm humid subtropical to tropical coastal settings of the Gulf Coastal Plain of Texas, Florida, and Central America.